


Come Undone

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Eve taking advantage of Malcolm, F/M, Kidnapping, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Psychological Torture, Torture, Whump, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-08 07:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 65,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21472153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: Malcolm is starting to come undone under the weight of all he’s bearing. To make matters worse, someone from his father's past is out the exact their pound of flesh from the remaining Whitlys putting survival in question.
Comments: 218
Kudos: 293
Collections: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cozy_coffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cozy_coffee/gifts), [vanillafluffy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/gifts).

> **Timeline/Spoilers** \-- Assume spoilers up to the most recent episode and speculation on Pied-A-Terre
> 
> **Author’s Note** \-- written for written for vanilla_fluffy & Cozy_coffee in comment_fic for the prompts Prodigal Son, Malcolm Bright, losing it on a day when nothing goes right & Any, any, when was the last time you smiled? & a late whumptober offering for the prompt dragged away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Isabelle Disraeli for making me this cover for a snowflake challenge request. If you want to tell them how much you liked it, you can find her post [ here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28812558)

[](https://imgur.com/1VOdqwI)  
_ Can't ever keep from falling apart_  
Who do you need?  
Who do you love?  
When you come undone  
Duran Duran 

Chapter One

The door buzzer startled Malcolm, mostly because he couldn’t imagine who it could be. His mother would just let herself in whether he wanted her to or not. Even changing the locks hadn’t stopped her. Ainsley and he rarely invaded each other’s private spaces. When he pressed the intercom to ask who it was, he was baffled as to why he never thought it might be Gil. He buzzed his mentor in and went over to the kitchen island to rapidly hide all his pill bottles. It wasn’t like Gil didn’t know Malcolm was medicated to the gills, no pun intended. He just didn’t want the best man he knew to realize the depths of his own mental illness. He didn’t want Gil to think he shouldn’t be out in the field even though Malcolm had no reason to think Gil would ever stigmatize his illness. Of course he hadn’t thought the FBI would have either until they did.

Gil arrived carrying a big thermal bag, which he promptly set on the kitchen island before looking around the place. Malcolm’s cheeks burned a bit, embarrassed at having not invited his friend here since he’d been back. “I see the weapons collection has gotten even bigger.”

Malcolm nodded. “I always have my eyes open for something new and interesting. What’s in the bag, Gil?”

“Dinner.”

Malcolm sighed. He didn’t want dinner. He honestly didn’t even want company. His mind had been a whirl since the moment he’d been taken off the Paul Lazar case, a cacophony of polar opposite ideas shrieking in his brain. He wanted desperately to disobey as he had so many times before. However, his logical frontal cortex reminded him that he wouldn’t just hurt himself. He’d damage the team, the one he had slipped into so easily – well maybe not with JT, not just yet. He couldn’t bring himself to tarnish them. He couldn’t just not leave it go either, not when he saw the girl in the box’s bracelet. Had Gil turned that over to the FBI? No, he suspected that had not been entered into evidence, at least not yet. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Gil snorted. “Did you eat last night after I told you you’re off the case? Did you eat at all today?”

“I had a little something.” That wasn’t an outright lie, not if you considered the sugar in his coffee ‘a little something.’ 

Gil side eyed him, not believing his bullshit for a moment. “You’re having dinner. Hmm, where’s Sunshine?” he asked suddenly when he spotted her empty cage.

Malcolm pointed to the stairs leading up to the next level. She was perched on one of them, having gotten bored with stretching her wings or curious about something she had spotted there. “You really didn’t need to come, Gil.”

“The fact you’re so hot to push me out the door tells me I was right to come over. Talk to me, kid.”

“What’s to say, Gil? They’re going to be all over _my_ case, telling people things about me that aren’t even true.” Malcolm stopped, his voice cracking as his throat went thick and tight. What Dani and JT, not to mention Edrisa, thought of him mattered. They already knew he was weird. Only Edrisa hadn’t cared from the very beginning but she was weird too. Dani was on her way to being a friend and at least JT didn’t roll his eyes every time Malcolm said something anymore. What would they think when his ex-colleagues started accusing him of being as bad as his father? How could they be so bad at understanding psychology, though to be fair, the others weren’t profilers but he had to think a profiler might be assigned to this? He hoped they were better at understanding Lazar than the rest of the FBI would be. Of course his own arrogance – and he couldn’t deny he had some when it came to his abilities – hadn’t helped his cause but that’s what you got when you spent your entire life fighting against everyone’s preconceived notions of what you were like. Everyone always assumed the worst of him and he tended to give it to them. It was easier than the constant battle. He regretted that now. 

“You don’t know….”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Gil, not if you plan for me to keep down dinner.” Malcolm stared at the countertop. It was preferable to looking into Gil’s dark eyes and seeing the ocean of worry held within. “What did you bring?”

Gil let him slide and emptied the bag. “I brought both pancit sotanghon and chicken adobo because I wasn’t sure which you’d eat. Both are Jackie’s recipes.”

Malcolm smiled a little. “I like both.”

“I am familiar with you.” Gil chuckled “And look there, you almost smiled. I was going to ask you when was the last time you’ve done that.”

_What did he have to smile about_? Malcolm thought but didn’t inflict the harshness on Gil. “When I was out with Dani at that club?”

“What you do while high doesn’t count. Almost sorry that she didn’t record it then. I heard about your trying to get her to throw axes, though god knows where you planned to do that.”

He shook his head, wincing as his neck ached. His body had a lot to recover from after foolishly falling into Lazar’s turnstile trap like an idiot. “I don’t remember. I’m afraid to know what else she told you.”

“Mostly just that,” Gil replied but the little smile playing on his lips suggested he was lying and that Malcolm had made a complete fool of himself. Well he couldn’t be blamed for that. He had been so high. Gil put one of the dishes in a skillet to heat it up and rooted around for a pan for the adobo. The loft almost immediately began to fill with the smells of spice and Malcolm’s belly rumbled a bit.

He hadn’t eaten all day and his memory was filled with all the good nights growing up when Jackie Arroyo had cooked for him, had held him close and comforted him. Malcolm knew his mother loved him but she had her own demons to fight. They kept her from being particularly demonstrative in her love or maybe that was the rigid, frigid Milton upbringing.

“Bright, I need you to promise something.”

Malcolm turned to Gil, knowing he wasn’t hiding his pain well. He knew what was coming. “Please don’t ask that of me.”

“I am because I _have_ to. You need to let the FBI do their thing and do not throw all of us under the bus.”

“But I’m the one who’ll catch Lazar, not them and you know it.” Malcolm balled his fist to keep it from shaking.

“You don’t know that. Don’t let your ego do you thinking for you, kid.” Gil pointed a finger at him. “The FBI is good at their job and that’s why you went to work for them.”

Malcolm couldn’t hold Gil’s gaze. “Lazar wants to talk to _me_ not them.”

“And I’ve told them that. If it comes down to it, to letting you talk to him or losing him for good, they’ll do it and I’ll be there to supervise it,” Gil promised but Malcolm knew that he had no control over that. He just didn’t want to fight with Gil over it.

He nodded. “It will come to that. It’s me Lazar wants, Gil. He was there on that camping trip. I don’t remember it but I know that much. I think…I was to be the next apprentice.”

Gil’s mouth tightened, the muscles in his cheeks jumping. “I believe you. Damn, this isn’t what I wanted to talk about when I came here.”

“You came to feed me.”

“I came because I wanted to keep you company and I wanted to see you smile.”

Malcolm walked over to the pot of adobo, breathing in as deep as his injured ribs would allow. He savored the scents of vinegar and soy. “This does make me smile. I’ll behave myself, Gil. I don’t want the team in trouble.”

Gil patted Malcolm’s shoulder. “I know you’ll try. Just remember we all float or sink together.”

He melted into Gil’s touch. It had been too long since he’d allowed himself to think of Gil as his father, or at least the father he should have had. “I know.”

“So long as you remember that.” Gil moved off and dug up a wooden spoon to stir the adobo. “Since we have a bit of free time whether or not we want it, want to go on a little trip to see a weird museum?”

Jackie had started that tradition when Malcolm was a child, arguing that Malcolm wasn’t just a little bit weird himself, he was also highly intelligent and creative and it needed nurturing. At the remembrance of many fascinating trips with her and Gil he smiled wide, a true honest smile for the first time in a while. “I’d love it. What did you have in mind?”

“Let’s see.” Gil pulled out his phone and Googled it. “There’s the museum of finance but honestly, that sounds horrible. Hmmm, the museum of sex.” He glanced at Malcolm and they both burst out laughing.

“Not with you!” Malcolm’s face heated up. No one wanted to think about sex with their dad, real or adopted.

“Agreed and the museum of morbid anatomy sounds a little too on the nose for us. Ah, how about this? The Houdini Museum?”

“Perfect.” Malcolm took down some plates thinking that maybe a little down time with Gil like when he was younger was just what he needed. He could forget it all for a little while and then things would get better? Why did he somehow doubt that?  



	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

The trip to the museum had given Malcolm a blissful day off with nothing to eat at his mind. He’d let go of his worries and let himself enjoy Gil’s company and had a good day. He should have known it wasn’t going to last. He’d gone to work planning to ask Gil if they could try to get a court order to get around the fact his father was in solitary confinement because he really _did_ need to speak to him, to get answers, to get one step ahead of the FBI. Hell he was willing to turn the information right over to them if it meant he could get around the injunction.

Instead, he was standing in the rain without an umbrella as they fished two bodies out of a pond in Central Park’s Ramble. It didn’t matter that he was getting soaked. His suit was already drenched with coffee after the barista hadn’t gotten the lid on his cup sealed right and his chest burned to play a painful concert with his bruised ribs. He’d dragged into the station looking a mess, his tie – probably beyond saving – in his hand. That’s when he spotted Walker, one of his former colleagues that he couldn’t handle even before the blow out. Walker and a few of the detectives she’d been talking to eyed him, whispering and grinning at him. He wanted to lose it then, knowing that Walker had been poisoning whoever would listen against him, but if he did, he’d only be playing into her game. He kept his head up and didn’t get beyond putting his tie on Gil’s window seal to try and dry it after he washed it out in the sink. The call came in about the bodies and Malcolm thought maybe the day wouldn’t be a total loss.

And then he felt guilty that he was that excited over someone dying. The excitement ebbed fast once they got there. First, a patrol car had come in a little too hot on Gil’s heels and kissed their back bumper. The jarring set his ribs off. On the way through the Ramble, in the rain, JT slipped and fell right into Malcolm who in turn brought Dani down with him. All three of them spent a moment in the mud cursing.

By the time he’d gotten up, some of the blisters on his chest oozed and Malcolm’s ribs burned with every breath. Had all this finally fully cracked one of them? He didn’t have time for that. Between mud and coffee he doubted the cleaner could save his suit but that worry died fast when he saw what they really had waiting for them. Even Edrisa was uncharacteristically somber, standing over two small bodies. Malcolm glanced away, steeling his jaw. Kids, no one ever wanted to have a case dealing with murdered children.

Gathering himself up, he firmed up his professionalism and walked over to Edrisa but kept quiet. She’d fill him in soon enough.

“Tell me there’s not more,” Gil said to her.

“The divers are down now,” she replied. “I’m thinking there might be. These two have not been in the water the same amount of time.” She gestured to the two little victims. The bodies were so swollen and black Malcolm couldn’t guess at age, gender or race. The smell triggered all their gag reflexes judging by the faces around him but no one gave in. This wasn’t a first time for any of them but he certainly wished futility that it would be the last time he stood over a child.

“Anything you can tell us?” Dani asked. “Bright?”

He shook his head. “There’s not much here. Obviously whoever took the kids did not want them to be found but did he tie them down, Edrisa?”

“Yes but not well.” She pointed to one narrow wrist that still had rope fibers clinging to it. “And I would say they were thrown in naked.”

“You might not even be able to tell if they were sexually assaulted due to amount of decomp,” he said.

“It’s unlikely. Hopefully I’ll at least be able to tell cause of death.”

“So, we could have a pedophile with a preference for kids around eight to ten judging by their size or we could have someone who abused their kids to death and tried to hide it. Hopefully Edrisa can get DNA from them because about two thousand kids go missing nationwide every day.”

“Where do you get a statistic like that?” JT muttered and not for the first time when it came to something Malcolm said.

He gritted his teeth and wanted to scream ‘where the hell do you think?’ Instead he backed away from the scene to let Edrisa work, digging in his pocket for a piece of hard candy because damn, he needed the comfort it represented. He found a solitary Jolly Rancher watermelon and tugged it free of the wrapping. Before he could get it into his mouth a squirrel moved overhead sending a dead small branch raining down. It hit him in the head and he dropped the candy in the mud.

“Damn it! Just…damn!” He grabbed he branch and winged it back up at the squirrel, who chittered at him, missed by a country mile as far as the branch was concerned. Malcolm whirled around, seeing everyone staring at him. “What?”

“You okay, bro?” JT asked.

“No! I’m not okay! How is anything about this okay? There’s a serial killer out there wanting to play phone tag with me but the FBI is in my damn way! And the only thing worse than that would be a serial pedophilic killer.” He stabbed a finger at the bodies. “You’re always looking at me like you expect _me_ to be the killer. I have coffee scalded blisters all over my chest and a damn squirrel just brained me and I lost my candy.”

“You’re also losing your shit,” JT replied, giving him the fish eye.

“Haven’t I earned it? Why do I have to be the ice man? Why can’t I….” Malcolm trailed off his breath coming in big gulps.

“Because you’re the one who _is_ broken and has to be better than the rest of us just to be considered half as good,” Dani said, taking a few steps towards him but stopped when he glared.

“Well it sucks and it shouldn’t be that way.”

“No, it shouldn’t. You’re brilliant,” Edrisa offered, then whipped back around to look at her two young charges when he couldn’t stop the heat of his gaze firing her way. He didn’t want her support just now because even that made the others look at him like he was weird because she was strange too.

“It does and I’m tired of no one trusting me or thinking I’m just like my father,” he raged, his fists balling up and unfurling almost entirely out of his conscious control.

“Bright, take a breather,” Gil ordered and when Malcolm opened his mouth to protest, Gil stabbed a finger to a spot distant. “Now, it’s not open for negotiation.”

Not about to challenge Gil with the others looking, he stomped off and sat down on some tree roots. They weren’t comfortable and god knew what was seeping into his pants but he already had a backside covered in mud so what did it matter. At least the branches overhead kept most of the rain off him. His phone vibrated in his pocket and with nothing else to do thanks to his unprofessional temper tantrum, Malcolm checked the text half expecting it to be Ainsley somehow seeing the case through his eyes or something and wanting in on the case. Instead it was Eve wanting to meet up tonight. What did this woman want of him? Couldn’t she see he was a broken toy? He texted he had a case and couldn’t. A few second later he received another text, his mother this time. He told her he had a case with kids and couldn’t come to dinner. She texted him back with some worried nonsense that put a capper on his crappy day.

Finally, Gil let him back in the game but there wasn’t much he could add, not even after a third child was fished up. Gil insisted Malcolm go home and wait for Edrisa’s autopsies to help him flesh out a profile which was solid advice. With Walker in the office he was better off not being there and to insure that, Gil had driven him home, making him sit on plastic garbage bags he had in the trunk for the times just like this: when the crime scene had left them filthy.

Malcolm had nibbled on some cheese and soup after he had a hot shower. He would have to apologize to JT and the others tomorrow. At a loss as to what to do with himself, he decided to outline what he could remember about the girl in the box but had only found the paper when his door buzzer went off. Was it Gil again coming to dress him down for melting down like a child? Was it Dani, potentially concerned for him? He nearly hid from whoever it was but in the end, curiosity won out and he hit the intercom. “Yes?”

“Malcolm, it’s Eve.”

He made a face. Hadn’t he been clear he wasn’t in the mood? She certainly didn’t know how to take no for an answer and he almost gave it to her again but instead he buzzed her in. She came up in a stylish pantsuit. No wonder his mother liked her. Eve dressed up well. “I’m sorry, Eve, this isn’t a good time,” he said when he let her in.

“I know. Your mother said you had a case with dead children and she didn’t want you to be alone.”

Who was this woman who had gotten into his mother’s confidences so easily? Jessica Whitly didn’t trust easily or was his mother drinking so much now that she didn’t know who she was confiding in? It was a scenario that fit with his horrible day. “I might be better off alone tonight.”

“Are you sure?” Eve stroked his cheek, making him shudder. It was too intimate a touch from someone he barely knew. The parts of him that didn’t think, however, took notice. She was also a pretty woman and those parts recognized that. “You look like you could use company.”

He shook his head. “You don’t want to start this with me, Eve. I’m never going to be normal. I’ll always be _work_.”

“The best things always are,” she said, closing the gap between them. “Though I admit you scare me, Malcolm Bright.”

As her fingers brushed his hair, he muttered, “And you scare me too.”

The moment she kissed him he knew he wasn’t going to stop anything that happened tonight. He’d let her lead. A good strong hit of dopamine and oxytocin would clear his mind, make things feel better if only for a little while. He slammed the crypt door on the tomb in his brain where Smart!Malcolm lived, the part shrieking that risky sex with strangers was a sign of his mental issues were out of control and that he should know better. He did know that of course but he needed to feel good, to feel less lost even if it was only temporary, even if it was a pure lie.

He let her toss him back on the bed and take from him whatever she wanted. Eve had him in a position he hadn’t been for too long a time. It wasn’t even that good as a result but in the end, his mind swimming in a sea of happy neurohormones, he did feel better. He could only guess at what Eve thought of him when he wouldn’t let her stay the night. He’d probably never see her again because he was too far from normal to have a relationship with.

Sex had tired him nicely, the horror of the day fading from his mind. He slept until he heard a noise. He sat upright, his shackles rattling their D-rings. Someone was in his loft. “Who are you?” He was screwed. All of his weapons were in the other side of the loft so he tried to palm his cell phone without whoever it was seeing it.

As she stepped into the light spilling in from the huge window, he saw it was Eve. She wore only his shirt as if she were a girlfriend lounging about. He had seen her leave? Had she tampered with the lock? He’d been too blissed out to check it. When did she get his shirt? How long had she been wandering around while he slept? What had he done? _You deserve this_, part of his brain whispered. _Whatever happens now, Martin Whitly’s son deserves it_. Malcolm tried to get his shackles undone. There was something in her hand but he couldn’t tell what it was in the relative darkness. It was small.

Eve bounced on the bed and straddled him. She pried his fingers off the shackle’s buckle. “Uh-uh, that’ll never do.”

“Eve, what are you doing here?”

She kissed him and bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed. He yelped, trying to kick her off. She struck him with her free hand, harder than he expected she could. “I think I’ll answer the first question first. My actual name is Mallory Lostetter. Does that ring a bell?”

“Lostetter?” A chill settled into him and Malcolm dug his heels into the damp mattress trying to toss himself free. Julissa Lostetter had been his father’s seventh victim.

“Oh, I see that it does,” Eve laughed, reaching down to grab him by the balls, giving them a quick twist. Malcolm bucked, screamed and things went black for a second. Something slammed into his neck and burned into his veins. “Good thing Jessica told me how many drugs you take. I had to take this out to the maximum dose just in case you were used to the sedatives. And how convenient of you to tie yourself up for me.”

Malcolm’s vision started to crumple in on itself. He’d never be able to fight his way past whatever it was to free himself. She’d just keep punching him in the groin until the fight went out of him. He fumbled with his phone as she got off the bed and started pulling up the fitted sheet, obviously planning to cart him off wrapped up in any DNA evidence she had left behind. 

He managed to text 911 to Gil before she took the phone and fling it across the loft. “None of that. Be a good boy, Malcolm, and things will go easier on you.”

“Why?” he muttered his tongue feeling too thick for his mouth.

“Why am I doing this? Or why did I sleep with you first?” She smirked.

“Doing this ‘cause of m’father,” he slurred.

“True. And I slept with you first because you’re cute and when he finds out just how his little boy was betrayed it will hurt him more,” she snarled, all pretense of friendship gone.

_No it won’t. He’s not capable of that_ he thought. His father would be angry yes but because what was _his_ had been touched not because he loved his son no matter what he said. 

“Your father took away my family. Now I’m taking his starting with you. I guess you might have gotten a message out so I better hurry. No matter, it’ll just mean there’ll be a search party for you and I’ll join with your mother and sister. From there they’re easy prey.”

Malcolm’s last thought before the sedative carried him under was he wouldn’t be there to protect his family. That maybe Gil could.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter includes graphic violence and torture (mental and physical).

Gil normally didn’t use his phone as an alarm clock, rarely had it in his bedroom. Maybe that was him showing his age. Today he’d been so tired - exhausted by having to star at murdered children, consumed by worry as Malcolm melted down publicly - that he’d forgotten his phone in his pocket only to find himself jarred awake by the sound of a text. Cursing, he flopped out of bed and hunted down his pants, thinking of a million abuses he’d inflict on the person dragged him out of well-earned slumber. It had better not be more dead babies.

Gil’s heart sank, his hands shaking as he saw a 911 from Malcolm. He didn’t waste time texting. He called and got nothing but voice mail. Maybe he should have texted – wasn’t that what the younger crowd depended on so heavily - so he did that and threw on his clothes while he waited for a response. Nothing. He wasn’t going to mess with more waiting. Malcolm would never abuse the 911. Sleep fled as Gil pulled his muscle car out onto the road. He made fantastic time at this time of night. Parking next to Malcolm’s building was easy. He had the keys to the place. He insisted on it, especially after Malcolm had launched himself out the window.

To his heart-stopping shock, the door to the loft itself wasn’t locked. “Malcolm!” he called, flipping on the lights. No answer other than Sunshine’s chirruping.

“Malcolm!” His voice rang harsh and worried in his own ears. 

Fear slid over him like a smothering blanket as he checked every room downstairs and then ran up the iron staircase to examine the upper level. Nothing. It hadn’t escaped notice the bed was bare of bedding. Leaning on the wall, trying to catch his breath as nerves worked him into a tight ball of anxiety, he woke up JT and Dani. Within the hour, they were there with a CSI team, barring Edrisa because Gil hadn’t found Malcolm’s body: the only ray of hope he had.

“Are you sure he’s not just out?” JT sounded dubious. He knew damn well Gil wouldn’t have the crew all over the loft if he thought Malcolm was merely out.

“He managed a 911 and I found his phone crushed in the corner.” Gil stabbed a finger toward the kitchen to indicate where. “Someone took him.”

“His shackles are gone,” Dani said, peering under the bed. “They’ve been cut.”

“Shackles?” JT’s eyebrows brushed the ceiling and one of the CSI techs spared him a glance before heading toward the bathroom.

“Night terrors, he straps himself in,” Dani replied, checking around the bed along with the CIS tech.

“How do you know?” JT shot her an incredulous look. Gil ignored them, texting the best data recovery guy on the force. He wanted every secret Bright’s wrecked phone held. 

“How many times have I brought him home when’s been hurt or high? I’ve had to strap him down.”

“Would have paid to do that if I could have gagged him,” JT muttered, maybe trying to lighten the mood.

“The mouthguard is over here on the floor. I’ve already photographed it.” Gil headed JT off. “And he grinds his teeth and bites in his sleep before you ask, JT.”

“Who could have gotten in here?” JT asked, which was far more on track.

“That’s a good question. The door to the street is always locked, right? And could they have walked him down the stairs? I know he’s the walking wounded but Bright can fight, can’t he?” Dani peppered those questions to Gil.

“The door on the street was locked but the door to the loft wasn’t.” Gil ran a hand through his hair. He’d been mulling this over since he arrived. “And yes, he’s good in a fight but the text to me came in so late, he was most likely in bed.”

“Shackled up since they took the shackles with them,” Dani said.

Gil nodded as one of the CSI members started pulling up the mattress cover. “Did you find something?”

“No blood, lieutenant but this is wet. Any epithelials would probably have been on the missing sheets but you never know,” the investigator said as her partner opened a large paper bag for them to fold it into.

“Wet?” JT made a face, and Gil shot him the gimlet eye even though he didn’t want a complete picture of his ersatz son having sex.

“Didn’t you notice it sort of smells like sex in here?” Dani took Sunshine’s food out of a cabinet. Gil wondered if she planned to take the bird with her.

“I was hoping my brain had invented that because I can honestly _not_ imagine any scenario that would lead to Bright having sex,” JT said, and Gil huffed. 

Dani set aside the food and went to the sink to check out the glasses there. “He didn’t lie. He told me he had sex.”

“Do I even want to know?” JT asked as Gil pinched the bridge of his nose. Some days they were so like children.

Dani shrugged, and then waved over a tech. She gingerly handed over a glass with the ghost of lipstick on it. “I asked about what his partners thought of the shackles.”

“Okay, that aside, there was someone here,” Gil said. “And to answer your other question, Dani, there’s a service elevator. It’s possible whoever it was could have dragged Bright out that way.”

“You know him better than us, Gil. Does he have a girlfriend? Isn’t he new here?” Dani asked.

“He doesn’t that I know of, but he doesn’t tell me everything.” Gil frowned. Malcolm rarely brought up his lovers to him. Gil didn’t think many ever lasted more than a few encounters. Malcolm’s damage was too much for most. Dani had a point. Malcolm had only recently returned, hadn’t had time to make a connection. “I have no idea who it could be. I hate to say it but it’s something we might have to ask his sister or mother.” 

Damn, he didn’t want to have to call Jessica and tell her that Malcolm was gone. He didn’t know if she could hold together. JT interrupted that painful thought.

“Don’t hit me but could he have…uh, hired someone and got rolled?”

Gil grimaced. “In that scenario, I can’t imagine a prostitute taking Malcolm out of here complete with shackles and bedding.”

Dani shuddered. “But what if Lazar sent someone in to drug him? They have sex, Bright’s guard is down and maybe she drugs him or tasers him.”

Gil wagged a finger. “Now that is possible. I’ve watched over him for twenty years and I’ve not known Bright to go for prostitutes but what if whoever she was got to know him. He does occasionally go to bars.”

“But without having an idea about who it could be, this takes us nowhere,” Dani said.

“I’m hoping something can be recovered from the phone,” Gil replied. 

“We have a few hairs here, sir,” one of the CSI members called from the door to the bathroom. “Long, blonde.”

Gil sighed. “It could be his sister’s but it we’re lucky…”

“It would help narrow things down,” JT said, and glanced toward the door. “Does this place have CCTV?”

“I’ll have to ask Jessica, but I think the business across the street might,” Gil replied. 

Someone ran into the room, slipping on her paper-covered shoes. “Sir, I think we have something in the service elevator.”

“What?” Gil pushed past her before she could answer. She dogged his heels to the elevator.

“Right here, lieutenant.” She squatted down and pointed to the opening to the elevator. “Blood and hair, just a little but…”

“But if he was dragged out of here, his head could have collided with the edge.” Gil nodded. “That’s possible.”

“I have it photographed. Will collect the samples now.”

“Good.” Gil whipped around and stalked back into the loft.

Dani confronted him. “What now, Gil?”

“We’ll have to file all the appropriate paperwork and I’ll have to tell Jessica.” Gil didn’t want to have to face her, but he couldn’t let anyone else do this. He owed Jessica that much.

“Do you want one of us to do that?” Dani asked.

He shook his head. “It needs to come from me.”

Gil only wished he knew what to say.

X X X

Malcolm’s stomach roiled and his head ached when he swam back to consciousness. Pains made themselves known, his ribs and shoulders from the abuse they suffered at the hands of Paul Lazar. His groin throbbed, clarifying his memory. Through the haze of drugs, Eve’s attack flashed in his mind. He tried to get up, failing utterly. His hands had been hauled above his head, shackled in with his own soft shackles but with not enough of a tether for him to get one hand to the other to undo them. Eve had him on a chair, his ankles zip tied together but not anchored to the chair, and she’d completely stripped him. A plastic drop cloth rested under the chair; that couldn’t be more ominous.

Forcing himself to take a few deep breaths, trying to chase away the adrenaline surge, Malcolm studied the room. It made his fight or flight system kick in even harder. It had all the earmarks of a cabin in the woods. A rustic fireplace dominated the far wall and a neatly stacked set of logs waited for their turn to burn. The room smelled of wood and smoke. Next to the fireplace was an old and decorative trunk that made his skin crawl. It was so like his father’s. Black out curtains covered the windows so he couldn’t be sure he was in the woods, but he felt it in his marrow. His father had loved camping and cabins and they had gone more than once, more than the time he couldn’t remember. Was that detail in the books written about his father? His mind was too clouded with whatever Eve had injected him with. Hadn’t she said something about his father? He needed to shake this haze. His life depended on it.

Malcolm struggled with the bonds but got nowhere other than to flare pain up along his limbs. He stilled, hearing a noise down the short hallway that no doubt lead to a bedroom. Eve prowled toward him, leaving no doubt whatever happened next, he was going to be hurting more than he currently was. She hadn’t killed him outright, so she wanted something. Now he had to find out what it was and try to calm her down. He’d managed that many times before with other killers but never as the kidnapping victim.

“So, you’re finally awake.” Eve all but purred that. She was enjoying this and that tightened up everything in him. It was one thing to deal with vengeance. It was another to deal with a nascent sadist as she learned to savor pain. 

“Why, Eve?”

She pouted at him, running a hand along the line of his jaw. “You knew in the loft why. Did the drugs scramble your brains? I was almost afraid I’d given you too much. Your mother is right though. You don’t rest easy. Even under the influence, you whimpered and twitched. What haunts you, Malcolm?”

He licked his lip, forcing himself to meet her eye but at the same time trying not to be too defiant. “I think the same thing that haunts you.”

Her jaw tightened. “Your father.”

“You said your name was…” He fought the drugs in his system, trying to pick out the memory, to make that connection, to make her think she was important to him. “Mallory, right?”

“Julissa Lostetter was my mother and your father pulled her apart.” Eve dug her nails into his chin. 

He flinched and something sparked in her eyes. “And I am sorry, Mallory. I stopped him.”

“Not soon enough.”

“I was a boy. He hid what he was.” Malcolm shook. It was true up to a point. He was more sure than ever that his father and Paul had taken him on a shared kill, had forced him to stab someone. The leather straps going overhead from his wrists slapped his face as the trembling overtook him, betrayed him, spurred by memories of running through the woods, bloody knife in hand.

“You want me to believe no one in your miserable family knew what he was doing.” Eve backhanded him, splitting his lip.

“I was a child,” he reiterated. “My father sheltered me from what he was. To my mother, he was the perfect doctor, renowned in his field. He’d never betray that image to show he was a killer.”

Eve’s face twisted. “I hate your mother most of all, which is why she’ll be last. She _had_ to know what your father was. I want her feel what it’s like to lose everything.”

“She already does,” he said, and Eve didn’t bother with the niceties of a back hand this time. She punched him directly in the throat leaving him gasping through a traumatized, spastic airway.

“She has _no_ idea!” 

He gagged, trying to clear his throat. Finally, Malcolm could force out the words. “Hurting me will bring you nothing in the end, Mallory, just more pain for you. Do you want to live with what happens next? Will it rob you of any chance of peace?”

She twisted her fingers in his hair, jerking his head up. “What makes you think I’ve ever had peace or ever will? Your father took that from both of us. You’re lucky. Peace is coming soon enough.”

“Please, Mallory. I don’t want to die.”

“Neither did my mother,” she growled, sauntering over to the kitchen area of the cabin. “You’re probably wondering why I haven’t gagged you. We’re so deep into the woods no one is going to hear you scream. I can’t risk untying you for bathroom breaks, so things are probably going to get messy for you.”

He tried to keep calm. If he panicked, he was done for. “If you plan to keep me alive that long, part of you has to want to not do this, Mallory. Please, listen to that. You _know_ this will solve nothing.”

“How can someone so smart be so stupid, Malcolm?” Eve grinned at him, then turned and got something out of cabinet. His heart sank seeing a full head mask that would obscure hair and features. It looked to be the Scarecrow from Batman. His mind flashed back to a college friend who had loved comics. “If your parents even feel an ounce of what I’ve lived the last twenty years feeling, it’ll be worth it. I’m keeping you alive for now for a reason. Your father took pictures, didn’t he?”

Malcolm tried to swallow past his tight throat. He wasn’t going to get out of this easily. With terror locking him up, he couldn’t speak so he nodded. Eve said nothing as well, letting the camera and tripod she took out of the cabinet speak for her. She pulled on the mask after setting up the tripod. He knew how to profile, how to get into people’s minds so why now was he so unsure as to what to do? Did he meet the camera face on? Should he hide his face? Would she pity him if he did? No, Eve was angry deep to the soul. Him trying to elicit pity would only enrage her more.

“Mallory…”

“Save it. Save whatever speech you have planned, Malcolm. I’m not going to let you go. I’m not going to show you an iota more mercy than your father gave his victims. The sins of the father and all that jazz.” Her voice was muffled behind the mask, which didn’t even have a mouth hole. She pressed a button and the camera did a burst of pictures. If nothing else, there would be a record of his death. Had Gil gotten his text? Even if he had, he’d have no way of knowing where Eve had taken him. It was likely he’d die here, and Ainsley would be next.

“Please don’t hurt my sister,” he said. If he couldn’t move Eve in regard to him, maybe he could at least save Ainsley.

“Really?” Eve sauntered back over, cupping his chin, forcing him to look into the mask’s eye holes. “I’m looking forward to seeing her segment on your father. Jessica was raging about it. Apparently, your sister threw you right under the bus and yet, you care.”

“She’s my sister. Of course, I care.” _Even if she did betray me._ he thought, wondering if Ains would regret it when he was dead. 

She cocked her head. “You really do have beautiful eyes; do you know that? It didn’t take long to realize how damaged you had to be given the fact that as cute as you are, you still need your mom to shove women your way. In the end, how much do you think she’ll cry when she realizes she’s half the reason you died?”

Malcolm’s heart thundered. Eve’s tone reminded him so much of Lazar’s, of his own father’s that he knew she wouldn’t be dissuaded easily. He’d have to try and find his own way out of this. “She didn’t know, Mallory. Believe me, I had my own doubts about it, questioned her myself. She _didn’t_ know, and you’ll be hurting her for nothing.”

“Not for nothing.” Her fist balled up and then released, a movement all too familiar to him. “My camera has video too, of course, because I think I’m going to enjoy rewatching this.”

“You’re letting my father turn you into _him_,” he said, knowing it was a gamble. He could set her off pointing out her own psychopathy. He could die in the next instance but maybe if he held up a mirror to her, she might come back from the edge.

“Too late to worry about that now, Malcolm. The damage was done long ago. But relax, I’m not killing you tonight. You’ll be fine here while I’m back in the city. Like I said, your mother will need my support while they search for you. I’m certain they’ll notice you’re gone very quickly. I’ll make sure the temperature in here is comfortable. Oh, you’ll get pretty thirsty I’m sure, but you might be grateful for that because I doubt you’re going to want to spend too much time pissing on yourself.” She chuckled behind the latex. “I’ll be back to make sure you don’t die of dehydration. I debated on knocking you back out again but then I had a thought. What would be better, to make you feel what I do? You can thank Stephen King for this one, Malcolm.”

“Mallory, please.” Malcolm’s gut clenched knowing any reference to King couldn’t be good.

“Think my mother begged the Surgeon for mercy? I’m sure she did. Probably pleaded that she had children she needed to be there for. I’ll show you the mercy your father showed her.” Eve flipped on the camera again, no doubt on the video setting.

Malcolm struggled but even if he got his hands free, the zip ties around his ankles wouldn’t let him get far, not before she did whatever she had planned for him. Eve picked up a log from the fireplace, laughing bitterly when she turned and saw him trying to free himself.

“Good try but where would you go, Malcolm?” She strolled back over, holding the log against her shoulder.

“Mallory, don’t do this. Living with it…it’ll be harder than you think.”

“Guess I’ll have to find out the hard way.” She hefted the log and swung it.

It collided with his right ankle, bark biting into flesh. The sturdy wood powered through ligament tendon and maybe even bone. Its momentum was only stopped by his other foot. Malcolm shrieked, jumping so hard the chair went out from under him. His shoulders jerked as his suspended arms took all his weight. He swallowed a sob, his ankle instantly turning into a balloon. 

Eve tossed the log back toward the fireplace. “That was grosser than I thought it would be.” She shuddered. “Didn’t think it would feel like that.” She studied him, watching his chest heaving as he wept from the pain of an ankle, if not shattered, then at least partially dislocated. “I almost want to leave you hanging like that. You make a pretty picture that way.”

“Mallory, listen to yourself,” he grated out, trying to gather his scattered wits. “Is that you or is it the Surgeon talking?”

“You can stop saying my name any time now, Malcolm. Quit trying to humanize me, to make me feel sorry for you. I know exactly what you’re doing. We have no emotional connection. Since I’ll be gone for a while, and I think I read somewhere that people can suffocate if suspended from their arms too long, I’d better set you back up.”

Eve pushed the chair back under him, whacking him in the testicles in the process. Once she had him seated, she loosened one arm from the ceiling, taking off his shackle. Even as he tried to grab her, she fended him off and got a zip tie locked around him. He clenched his fist and flexed his wrist as she did so, trying to make it as big as possible with the hopes of getting some slack. She repeated the process and stepped back to observe her handiwork.

“Eve,” he said, realizing he’d better get her pseudonym on record if anyone ever found the video. “he isn’t going to care that I suffer. My father’s a psychopath. He’s incapable of that. The most you’ll get from him, if he ever finds out, is anger that you touched his _property_.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re more than that. I’m betting he saw you as a chance for his legacy to expand and live on. But if that’s all I get from him, then fine. I can live with that.” She turned off the recording and studied him more. “Should I put you back out to make sure you stay put or do I let you suffer that ankle’s pain? Suffer I think.”

With that she put the mask back in the cabinet but left the camera set up. She gathered up her bag from next to the door and was gone. Malcolm let himself cry for a while, indulging his pain. It would give Eve time to get out of here before he tried anything. She might kill him after all if she returned to see him trying to escape. Calming down, Malcolm relaxed his hands, giving himself some slack. It wasn’t enough to get free, but it was something. He lifted his hands overhead and slammed them down into his thigh. It was only a matter of time – bloodying his wrists - before he broke the locking mechanisms to the zip ties. He didn’t know what he’d do from there, but it was a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to you if you know which Stephen King book Eve's referencing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains graphic violence and both physical and psychologic torture.

Chapter Four  
Gil sat next to Jessica on the couch, letting her sob against his shoulder. Ainsley prowled in front of the fire place, alternately shooting him hostile looks and appearing on the edge of a break down. He didn’t blame her. He was used to the rage of a family when a policeman showed up with horrible news. Fury was a common response to loss.

“How can he be gone?” Ainsley growled. “You’re sure, Gil?”

“I’m sure as I can be. I got an emergency text. His phone is broken, and his door unlocked. Someone took the bedding and his cuffs.” He didn’t want to tell either woman about the blood and hair on the edge of the elevator. They’d assume the worst and he didn’t want them to think Malcolm was dead. Mostly because he didn’t want to think Malcolm was dead. 

Jessica sat back, covering her face with her hands. Gil spotted one of her servants hovering in the doorway with a box of tissues. He waved her in, and she handed them off to him. He pulled a few out and pressed them into Jessica’s hand. “I don’t want any sugar coating, Gil.”

“I won’t do that to you,” he promised. He had done it in the past and she had always called him on it. He hated worrying her, but this was bigger than any of those previous times. Malcolm was in serious danger if he was truly still alive. 

“Was it Lazar?” She wiped at her face with the tissues as Ainsley dropped onto the couch by her mother’s other side. 

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I believe it was a woman,” he replied. 

“Why?” Ainsley’s brow beetled. “How could she have gotten to him? My brother can protect himself.”

“Well…if I had to guess, the way a woman usually gets to a man,” he said, his cheeks heating up. How stupid was that? He just didn’t want to have to talk about Malcolm’s sex life with his mother and sister.

“Oh.” Ainsley’s face flashed ruby.

“I…really?” Jessica looked at him.

Did she really not think her son had sex? No, there was something else, he realized. “What is it, Jess?”

“I was trying to set him up with Eve, but I didn’t think it was taking,” she replied, squirming on the couch. She looked ready to come out of her skin.

“Who’s Eve?” He pounced on that hoping it was a lead worth chasing down.

“Do I know her?” Ainsley asked.

Jessica shook her head. “Not yet. She’s in charge of a non-profit I’m helping with, to aid the victims of human trafficking. Oh, she’s supposed to be here today. I need to text her and tell her no.”

“No, don’t.” Gil held out a hand. “I’ll want to talk to her. You don’t have to say anything to her. I’m sure you’re not going to be up to it, but I’ll need to.”

“She wouldn’t hurt him,” Jessica argued, obviously needing to convince herself of that. “She’s so happy to help victims that she didn’t care if my money had Whitly’s name attached to it. That’s not the sort of person who’d hurt my son. She’s kind.” 

She sounded so desperate to believe that he hoped he didn’t have to crush her and her beliefs. Jessica Whitly was an odd woman but he had to think she hadn’t always been. She was what Martin Whitly had bent and twisted. She might have been jealous of him and Jackie from time to time but she always tried to do what was best for her son to the point of tolerating a second mother figure in his life. He didn’t want this to come down to her having introduced her child to his kidnapper. “I still need to talk to her. I need to find out who Malcolm was with last night. I know where he was up until I drove him home after we left our latest crime scene.”

“It couldn’t have anything to do with the new crime could it?” Ainsley asked. “The one you gook him home from?”

“I don’t see how. We don’t have the first clue as to who or even when someone threw three children into the lake. And even if the killer observed us, I’m not sure how they would have gotten into Bright’s loft. This had to be someone he knew and let in. Neither door had been forced.”

“What aren’t you telling us, Gil?” Jessica demanded. She grabbed his wrist.

“Nothing that I haven’t already. This was someone he went to bed with because why else empty the trash and take the bedding. I’m making the assumption he at least knew her and it wasn’t someone he hired,” Gil said, and Jessica favored with him a terribly sour look. “I know! I don’t think that either but I have no idea who he was seeing and since you thought he wasn’t seeing anyone and were nudging this Eve woman his way I’m assuming you have no idea either.”

Jessica shook her head. “He rarely mentions his lovers to me, what very few he’s ever had. The only time I’ve seen them is when he wants to upset Great Aunt Gladys by inviting ‘completely inappropriate women’ to the holiday table.” She smiled faintly at that, enjoying her son’s rebellion. Gil knew Great Aunt Gladys was an old blue-blooded racist snob of the highest order. If Malcolm survived, he’d be likely to invite JT as his date to the table just to watch the ancient battle axe melt down. Tally would probably send her husband along just to make a point.

“I have no idea. He tells me nothing about that either. He’s like a secret squirrel when it comes to women.” Ainsley sighed. “And I never ask. It’s his business. Except now, it’s gotten him hurt, hasn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. That’s why I need to talk to this Eve person. If she tried to get Malcolm to go out, I need to know. This isn’t going to be a pleasant conversation and not one I want to have in front of either of you. She might be intimidated with Malcolm’s mother watching on.”

Jessica nodded. “You can use the library. Gil, you have to get him back. No matter what’s happened….no matter what condi…” she broke off on the word, a little sob catching in her throat. Gil put a hand on her wrist, giving it a gentle squeeze. Jessica tossed her hair back, steadying herself. She dragged in a ragged breath. “If he’s gone, I still want him back.”

“Think positively as much as you can, Jess.” Gil wished he could do the same but it was hard. “If they wanted him dead, it would have been so much easier to kill him in his own home. He doesn’t have anyone in the way of neighbors there in the night. They took him for a reason.”

“No one has called.” Jessica glanced at the landline phone on the fireplace and then at the cell phone on the table. His tech team had been putting a trap and trace on every number the Whitlys had. 

“It might not be about ransom,” he said though it certainly could have been. The Milton side of the family was still swimming with cash. 

“It could be about the Junkyard Killer,” Ainsley said. “It could be about Dad.”

Jessica made a sharp growling sound, punching her hand into the couch. “It always comes back to your father. He will never stop haunting this family!”

Gil sighed, wishing he could tell her otherwise but he couldn’t. “I know. It’s very possible that this is somehow hooked into Lazar. He’s stopped calling the old number in the basement. At least for now. He had his chance at Malcolm once and didn’t take it. I think he…”

Jessica popped off the couch, staring down at him. “What do you mean had his chance? What happened?”

Gil winced at his slip. He should have known Malcolm would never have told his mother about getting popped in the subway tunnel. “He followed Lazar and got caught. Lazar could have killed him then and there but he didn’t. He left Malcolm go.”

“Was he hurt? When did this happen?” Ainsley asked, shaking.

“The night he chased _you_ in the hospital.” Gil gave her the gimlet eye. Yet another Whitly who didn’t listen to reason. “And yes, he was hurt. He broke or nearly broke a couple of ribs. And before you say anything, Jessica, yes, I chewed him a new one for being so stupid. He’s gotten tunnel vision about Lazar and the…”

“Girl in the box,” Jessica said, sagging back down next to him. She dragged her fingers through her hair, tearing at the snarls.

“She’s real,” he broke in, realizing Malcolm hadn’t told her this either. “Lazar gave us a bracelet.”

“That’s not…” Jessica trailed off as Ainsley barked, “What?” 

“She’s real,” he insisted.

“And I didn’t believe him.” Jessica’s lips trembled and it spread throughout her body. 

Gil folded her into his arms, letting her cry anew as Ainsley stroked her mother’s hair. Jessica pushed away quickly enough. “I didn’t believe him either, Jessica. We were wrong. I’ll never stop feeling guilty about it.”

“Why couldn’t he have told me that? He didn’t think I’d believe him again.” 

“And he didn’t want you to feel all this guilt and pain over not believing him,” Gil said, thinking on all the doctor’s visits, all the medications Malcolm had endured spurred by his belief in the girl in the box.

She wiped her eyes. “And he told me nothing. I wish…well what would wishes change? He did tell me to keep my gun handy, which maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned to you but it’s here. It’s registered and I know how to shoot it.”

“I remember.” He’d be the one in the early days to suggest Jessica take lessons and join a shooting club. She had felt so unsafe in the days when it wasn’t sure Martin would be kept in prison or a mental hospital, and back when it was possible someone would seek her out for vengeance. “I’m not saying not to have it. I think you should, with Lazar out there and all stirred up.”

“Thanks to Malcolm,” Ainsley sighed, bitter as orange pith. “And you think he could have put a woman in Malcolm’s path.”

Gil shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t think he’d have had the time to do that. We’ve only known about him for a few days. I’m not entirely sure Malcolm would be that risky to sleep with someone he barely knows.”

“Yes, he would,” Jessica whispered. “Or he has in the past. I overheard him one day talking to someone from one of his psych classes over Christmas break. It’s part of his issues, risky behavior. Usually he indulges that with _you_ or the damn FBI chasing bad guys but he’s gone the other route as well. I wish I could say he hasn’t. It’s been years but I’m not sure he’s outgrown that. Do you ever outgrow mental issues?”

“You can treat them.” Gil wished Malcolm had come to him when he realized that dangerous pattern to his behavior but talking sex with a parental figure was rarely easy or that productive. “I try to keep him as safe as I can, Jessica but he doesn’t listen to me always.”

She snorted. “He’s my son, Gil. You don’t have to explain his foibles. But maybe in some ways you know better than I. You’re the father he wanted, the one he trusts.”

“There are simply things a man isn’t comfortable telling his mother. Trust me, I had a list myself.” 

In spite of himself, Gil jumped with the doorbell sounded. The maid let in someone. His breath caught when he got his first good look at Eve Blanchard. She stopped dead, reading the room and her eyes widening as she did. Long blond hair, this could be something but she’d have to be brazen as hell to just show up at Jessica’s home like nothing had happened if she was his person.

“Jessica…what’s wrong?” she asked hesitantly.

Gil held a hand up to Jessica as he rose from the couch. “Ms. Blanchard?”

“Yes.” She shot him a curious look, almost wary.

“I’m Lieutenant Gil Arroyo of Major Crimes,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you.”

She blinked, looking between him and the women. “About what? Major Crimes? Have you found some of my women?”

It was his turn to be confused. “Your women?”

“Eve helps groups that help stop human trafficking,” Jessica reminded him.

“Ah, no, not that I’m aware of. We could go into the library and talk. It’s just a few questions,” he said, hoping she’d comply.

After casting a quick glance at Jessica, Eve nodded. “All right.” 

She followed him down the hallway. He opened the library door for her. “You seem to know the house well.”

That was an odd observation, almost a jealous one but he let it slide. “I’ve been here before. Have a seat Ms. Blanchard.”

When she chose one of the leather seats at the table, he sat opposite her. She watched him with sharp, intelligent eyes. This was a woman who was used to getting what she wanted. He could tell.

“What’s happened?”

“How well do you know Malcolm Bright?” he countered.

“I don’t. I mean, I know him, of course, from his mother but we’ve only met a couple of times and not for very long. We’re talking less than a half hour of conversation all told. Why?”

“I’m getting to that. So how did you meet Malcolm?”

“Right here. I was meeting with Jessica about arranging for her help with the charity and he came in to see his mother. He said about two sentences to me, one to explain that work wasn’t all exploding drugs. I’m not sure if I should mention that,” she said, almost coyly. She looked at him, her eyelashes fluttering. She was trying to disarm him. If he wasn’t naturally suspicious, it might work. Had it worked on Malcolm who was so very desperate to be loved?

“It’s fine. I know the incident. Have you ever been to his loft?”

She made a face like she drank vinegar. “That’s rather personal.”

“I have reasons to ask. I hope you’ll indulge me.”

“All right, yes, but just briefly. I shouldn’t have gone.” She leaned across the table, lowering her voice. “I was worried about Mrs. Whitly. She had been drunk in the middle of the day and was very agitated. I thought he might want to know.”

“And you went to his place? How did you know where it was?” That surprised Gil really. If she had only met him once here in the home, how had she known that? It wasn’t a state secret but Malcolm kept a lot of his footprint off the web as much as he could.

“Jessica told me. Like I said, I knew I should have called but that would have been such an awkward conversation.” She sucked at her teeth. “Honestly it was just as bad in person. I probably shouldn’t have gone but he was happy to know that his mother was foundering and needed help. I think he probably rushed right over to see her but you’d have to ask her about that.” Eve sat back. “Why are you asking all of this?”

“One more question and then I’ll explain as much as I’m able.”

She spread her hands and he took that as permission to continue.

“Did you see him last night?”

“No, I wanted to. I thought why not ask him out to dinner. I like his mother and she seemed to be giving me a little nudge toward her son. Usually that would annoy me but I could see something in her eyes, how worried she was about him. I get the idea that Malcolm has issues but who wouldn’t with his background?”

He shrugged and she continued. “Anyhow, Malcolm’s cute so I thought, why not? But he texted me back that he had a new case and couldn’t do dinner. I get the idea that’s a common thing for people in Major Crimes.”

“Unfortunately. So, you didn’t go over there on a whim last night, just to check up on him?”

“No. Are you asking me for an alibi, Detective Arroyo? What has happened?”

“Malcolm was kidnapped from his loft last night and yes, I’m asking you for an alibi.”

“Well shit.” She huffed, drumming her fingers on the table. “That’s the bad thing about being a single woman, well I guess a single anyone. I went home after work and there’s no one there to confirm or deny it. I feel very nervous now.”

“Don’t be. Most single people would be hard pressed for an alibi. I know I’d be most nights,” he said, trying to keep her calm. Eve’s answers were believable and at least some of it wouldn’t be hard to corroborate. He would ask Jessica before he left. But Eve’s lack of concern for Malcolm made him curious. This was someone she had wanted to go out with but then again, people handled extreme emotions differently.

Eve’s eyes narrowed as if she had suddenly truly processed what he’d said. “Someone kidnapped him?”

“That’s our assumption. I can’t talk much about an open case but yes, he’s been taken and you can understand why I’m glad you were willing to talk to me. Knowing that Malcolm had gone home and not left again helps.”

“He has security on his building,” she said. “Which I suppose is rather pointless of me to say since where in New York don’t we? How could someone get in?”

“I can’t answer that. Here.” Gil stood and fished out his card. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, call me.”

“I will. My god, I can’t believe it. Jessica has to be terrified out of her mind.” Eve pocketed his card without looking at it. “I should talk to her.”

“I’m not sure she’s in any state for that but I’ll let her make that call.” 

He escorted her back to the living room. Eve left him, hurrying to Jessica’s side. Now her face was a mask of worry and that bothered him. Something felt a little off but he’d be damned if he knew what. Long Blond Hair, the little voice in his head whispered again. He could only hope that the forensic techs would have an intact bulb on those hairs and could generate a DNA profile but even if they could, Eve had been there before. There was no telling when the hairs were dropped. They would be next to useless in that regard but if he could at least eliminate her and Ainsley as the source that would be something. He’d have to ask about the maid he knew Jessica sent to the loft.

“Detective Arroyo just told me. Oh, Jessica, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can help you do?” Eve turned back to him. “Will there be search teams or anything like that? I’d help anyway I can.”

“We have nowhere to look yet. And we’ll be filtering the news to the media. If we need any help on a search grid, I’m sure you’ll hear about it,” he said, praying it wouldn’t be necessary. If they were doing a grid, it was likely they’d be looking for a body. 

“I appreciate the offer, Eve but right now, I just want to be alone with my daughter,” Jessica said. “If we need anything, I’ll call.”

“Please do.” She caught Jessica’s hand in hers giving it a squeeze. “I’ll see myself out.”

Gil watched her go. “How well do you know her, Jess?”

“Not well at all but she seems like a very nice young woman, determined and idealistic.” Jessica sighed. “And concerned about me. She ratted my drinking out to Malcolm.”

“She told me. I’d keep any information you have from me and my team tight to your chest,” he replied.

“I wasn’t going to exploit my brother’s disappearance,” Ainsley huffed defensively. “My bosses wouldn’t allow me even if I wanted to.”

He shook his head. “No, sorry, Ainsley, I wasn’t talking about you. I meant, be careful who you give the info to outside of me and my team and that includes Eve.”

“You can’t think she had anything to do with this,” Jessica said, echoing her earlier concerns.

“I have no idea but she texted him last night. She says she stayed at home after he told her he was working. I have no reason to disbelieve her,” he replied, but yet somehow he did. He hadn’t been a cop this long just to easily disregard a gut instinct.

“Okay, we won’t tell anyone anything,” Jessica promised. “It couldn’t be Martin behind this, could it? He had to be furious when his little plan backfired and when he didn’t come off as glorious as he no doubt wanted to in Ainsley’s interview.” She shot a hot look at her daughter at that. 

“He’s still in solitary confinement as far as I know. In that case, he couldn’t orchestrate it unless it was all arranged a head of time. But I will call Claremont just to be sure.”

“You’ll find him, Gil. I know you won’t stop. If anyone will bull on no matter what, it’s you,” Jessica said in a tone that screamed she was desperate to be right about that. 

“I don’t plan to stop. I’ve already arranged with my bosses to hand off the crime from yesterday to another team. The FBI might come and talk to you too if they think Lazar is behind this, just warning you. Don’t let them bully you.”

Jessica set her jaw. “I’ll call Meredith. She’ll handle them.”

He knew that Meredith was the family lawyer. He’d let her run interference between Jessica and the FBI if need be. “Sounds good. I’m going to get back out there. Is there anything you need from me, Jess? Ainsley?”

“Call us,” Jessica said. “Keep us in the loop.”

“I’ll call as much as I’m able, even if I have nothing new. And either of you can call me day or night. I’ll be here for you as much as I can.”

“Thank you.” Jessica breathed.

Gil just hoped it would be enough.

XXX

Malcolm crawled slowly down the muddy trail. Eve hadn’t lied about this cabin’s isolation. He couldn’t walk. He’d tried to get up on the bad ankle only to fall and hit his head. That idiocy had cost him hours of daylight since he’d knocked himself out cold. He might not be able to walk but he could crawl so he managed to get across the cabin as painful as that was. He never thought about how much his ankle would drag along behind him and he was fairly sure he had a concussion. He couldn’t keep it off the ground and transfer his weight to that leg with every other inch forward. He never thought about the fact that he needed to balance with his ankle extended and flat to the ground. It had been a long time since he’d done any crawling.

As a result, he hadn’t made it nearly as far as he wanted to. It wouldn’t be enough. He was leaving a trail of blood and muddy drag marks. Twigs and debris had ripped him up from knees to ankle. His palms bled. His damaged ribs whined with every movement, with every breath. He had found a towel in the cabin, had wanted to use it to bind up his ankle but he had found nothing to use to steady the unstable joint. The branches he could get to easily to possibly splint it with weren’t good enough but he couldn’t move off trail after thicker branches, not naked and injured. The towel currently rested around his neck so he could wipe sweat from his eyes. In spite of the cold, he sweated heavily from the exertion.

He’d thrown up once, either a concussion or anxiety, it didn’t matter. He’d dehydrate that much faster now. Throwing up had triggered other parts of the GI system into action but better out here with dead leaves to deal with it than all over himself bound to that chair. He’d never make the road by night fall, he didn’t think. Granted he wasn’t sure where the hell it was because he’d been unconscious the entire trip to wherever the hell he was. It wasn’t a far drive outside of the city to get to woodlands that would support this type of landscape and cabins. He was either up the Hudson Valley a little toward Sleepy Hollow or Fishkill or maybe down into Jersey. He had to trust the path he was on went somewhere: Another cabin. The road. A ranger’s station. Malcolm didn’t care. Any of those places were better than the cabin Eve had left him in. Of course, if he didn’t find something soon, he could easily freeze to death once night fell. He could see his breath now that sun was lowering in the sky.

He had no idea when Eve would return. She’d promised not to let him die of dehydration but that would take days. If he was lucky, she’d be in the city overnight, inserting herself into his rescue mission. Or was she already hurting his mother or sister. At the thought, Malcolm tried to crawl faster and managed to simultaneously put his knee down on an acorn and put too much weight on his tortured ankle. The acorn bit into his quadriceps tendon. He nearly toppled onto his side from the twin pains. _Slow and steady, it’s your only way_, he cautioned himself. Gil would be hovering around Ainsley and Mother. Eve would have to be very devious to get past him. They’d be safe in these early days of the rescue. Malcolm knew the system well. They’d have the heat up high on the investigation for the first week but after that, more pressing, newer crimes would manifest and all Eve would have to do was wait it out.

Something sliced into his palm, making him curse out loud, something he rarely did. Malcolm lifted his hand to try and get the large splinter out. Just then he spotted something down the trail, a hint of chimney. _Oh God, please let someone be home. Or at least let there be a working phone line_. Malcolm did pick up his pace just a little now that he had a concrete goal in sight. His ankle burned and throbbed so badly he couldn’t catch his breath but he tried to compartmentalize it, lock it away. He needed to get to that cabin. Granted if someone was there, they might be unwilling to let a beaten, filthy naked man inside but they’d call the cops if only to save themselves from him. He had to get there fast before the ankle completely gave way. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to belly crawl with his bare privates dragging in the debris.

Something crunched behind him. _Please let it be a deer or a squirrel_. Given his luck it’d be a bear. Malcolm glanced over his shoulder and saw something far worse than a bear highlighted by the colors of sunset. Eve grinned at him, swinging something long and orange. Behind her, she dragged a deer sled. Malcolm wanted to scream but all he managed was a choked cry of frustration and despair. He knew what the long orange thing was: a cattle prod you could buy at any agricultural store.

“You got much further than I would have guessed. Too bad for you the Rhodeses only use that cabin in hunting season and don’t rent it out and we’re a little too early for deer season. You see, my family used to come out here all the time before my mother was murdered. I know these woods. Dad never sold our cabin and it’s mine now.” Eve ticked her tongue against her teeth. “I’ll have to do better in securing you this time.”

“Please, Mallory, there’s still time to stop this,” he said, reaching around him to find something, anything, to defend himself. Maybe it was pointless to keep using her real name, trying to forge a connection but he wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“You actually think I want to?” She arched an eyebrow at him.

“I do. You know you’re punishing people who had nothing to do with what happened to your mother.” Malcolm closed his fingers around a rock. It wasn’t big and he’d have to be very accurate with it to make it matter. He’d never been very good with sports that included throwing balls.

“I guess it’s not your fault you’re fruit from a poisonous true but if the apple didn’t fall very far – and you do have an interest in murder – then better to just dispose of you now, isn’t it?”

“You know I’m not a danger. I stop the people who are,” he argued. “Please, I won’t tell anyone what you did. You can walk away from this free and clear.”

She snorted. “You must think I’m dumb to fall for that one.”

“I had to try. I just don’t want you to hurt my mother and sister.”

“If I didn’t think your sister would turn into a threat with that journalistic curiosity of hers I might let her go but we both know better, don’t we?” Eve tapped the cattle prod shaft against her palm.

“Maybe.” Malcolm threw the rock.

It struck Eve in the shoulder but it was too small to do more than elicit a sharp cry from her. Adrenaline surged, forcing him up onto his damaged foot but he only made it a few faltering steps before the ankle gave way entirely, his foot pointing too far out to the side. She barely had to zap him to put him under. When his vision cleared, Eve had already muscled him into the deer sled and was rooting in her jacket pocket for something. She came up with another hypodermic filled with sedatives no doubt.

“No, Mallory, don’t. Don’t lock me inside my head,” he begged in earnest this time. He knew she would but he had to try. 

“It’s a terrible place to be, isn’t it? Probably exactly what the son of the Surgeon deserves.” She smiled and he didn’t realize one could look so hateful. “Can’t have you flailing around back here as I try to move you. With my luck there could be a small game hunter heading home right now and I can’t have you screaming and alerting them. But I’ll give you just a little bit of the medicine, how’s that for compromise? If you’re out cold, you aren’t suffering enough.”

He could argue that. His dreams were suffering a plenty. Malcolm tried to fend her off and she hit him with the cattle prod until he was limp muscled and had wet himself. She slipped the needle into a vein and the chemical burn added to his pain. It would be a while before it fully sedated him but as long as she had the cattle prod what did it matter?

Eve strapped the deer drag around herself, tugging on the harness. “Dad liked to hunt so we still had plenty of gear in the cabin. For your sake, you better hope the straps aren’t dry-rotted. You’ll freeze to death out here.”

He said nothing, glaring up at her. He didn’t think anything would reach her. Eve was determined to see this through and if he died, he died. That was her end goal anyhow. He’d have to save his energy for the next time she was gone. He blacked out by the time Eve dragged all the way back to the cabin and she had him on his knees on the plastic drop cloth, arms suspended overhead. He couldn’t focus but saw she was watching him from the couch.

“That didn’t take you long to fight your way past the meds. Outstanding. I guess I did see a frightening number of pill bottles in your place. Sucks to be you, Malcolm.” Eve laughed mirthlessly. She stood and sauntered over to him. She ran a finger down his arm. “You know, I expected to see cut scars. You look like the type to go under with all the horrors in your life. I should know, been there myself but no scars. Did you take pills instead?”

Malcolm locked eyes with her. Maybe this was the way to get through to her, a shared horrible experience. He nodded. “In college. I botched it obviously.”

“Just the one time?”

“Mother cried so hard for so long.” He shuddered at the memory. His mother’s money went to erase all record of it and he’d been put into a ‘resort’ until he healed and pulled back from the edge. “Ainsley was angry, angry that I didn’t call her, that she hadn’t noticed how bad I was. I couldn’t put them through that again.” And Gil, god Gil had been devastated, blamed himself but he wasn’t telling her that. She didn’t know about him and Gil unless his mother had told her and the less Eve knew about the man he had no doubt was trying to find him the better. 

“That surprises me.”

“I take risks on the job instead,” he added truthfully. “I run into danger.”

“So, if it kills you, your pain ends and your mother can tell everyone her son died a hero.”

“Mother barely admits to what I do for a living but yes, at least she’d know that I died trying to save someone else.” Malcolm shuddered. He’d never admitted that to anyone, not even Gil. “You have me, Mallory. Let me be enough. If I have to die here, then let _me_ be enough for vengeance. A life for a life.”

“Nice try. I actually _do_ believe you, Malcolm, that you want to die saving others. That you’d do anything to save your family. Maybe I’ll let you die first so you’ll never know if you failed or not.” Eve pulled a scalpel from her pocket and took it out of the small see-through plastic case it was in. 

Malcolm shivered, yanking hard on the restraints but getting nowhere. He didn’t want to die, not entirely. “Please, don’t.”

“Oh, not yet. It’s still too soon for you to die. But maybe you need scars like mine, like Ashley Burton’s. Do you know her?”

“The daughter of my father’s seventeenth victim,” he said. 

“She was a cutter. She finally couldn’t live with it anymore.” Eve draw the scalpel along his forearm, parting skin like it was cotton candy. He sucked in a breath against the pain. “You can let it out, Malcolm. I’d like to see you cry.”

She made another shallow cut on his arm and then another, not enough to do much damage but enough to scar. He was weeping by the time she had made enough cuts in his body to sate her need to see him suffer. Eve painted the wounds with hydrogen peroxide, laughing as he made guttural noises as it foamed and burned in the wounds. She bound up the incisions. He wouldn’t bleed to death at least. His whole body was a symphony of agony, so much pain he couldn’t concentrate on any one thing. Even breathing challenged him.

Eve released his arms and he fell forward onto his shredded limbs, his face striking the wooden floorboards. She grabbed the edge of the drop cloth she had under him and hauled him across the floor to the fireplace. Malcolm gave out a strangled cry when she opened the steamer trunk. He flailed at her, striking her a few good blows but not enough to stop her, not even enough to make her go get the cattle prod. The sedatives she’d given him and his time with his arms suspended, coupled with all the incised wounds, had turned them to lead.

Eve was stronger than he credited her for but she was a tall capable woman. She lifted him up bodily and shoved him into the trunk. Malcolm clung to the edges, trying hard not to go inside. A few sharp strikes to his fingers left them nerveless, and he folded up inside the trunk.

“Please, Mallory, no. I can’t! You don’t know! Please! I’ll be good. I’ll stay in my chair,” he screamed, panicked, kicking into the trunk. 

She leaned in and injected him again. “Oh, you’ve proven you can’t be trusted, Malcolm. Don’t worry, there are air holes.” 

Eve shut the lid and locked him in the darkness. A raw primal shriek of terror tore his throat. The animalistic cries - something humans could only make when they knew death had them in her cool unforgiving hands - ripped out of him until he ran out of air for it. He was locked in. He couldn’t breathe. As he hyperventilated himself into unconsciousness, Malcolm’s last thought was ‘I can’t be the boy in the box.’


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains violence and acts of torture

Chapter Five

Gil’s hands trembled subtly. He couldn’t shake the exhaustion sucking at his marrow. How did Malcolm function like this all the time? He hadn’t slept in two days going on three. He’d brought Dani with him to Jessica’s home to fill her in on the press conference he’d just held and to see if Special Agent Gibbons had called on her yet. The man had raked Gil and his team over the coals, convinced that Malcolm might be gone voluntarily, reading the scene in a different way. He was of the mind that it was Malcolm’s lover shackled and removed from the loft, brought as an offering to Lazar. What in the hell had gone on with Malcolm and the FBI that the bridge hadn’t just been burned but had been sent to hell and back or was Gibbons just an ass?

Gil remembered some detectives back in the day who had tried to break Malcolm as a child, calling him ‘daddy’s little helper,’ trying to make a boy responsible for murdering people. He’d hated it then and he hated it now. What did Malcolm have to do to convince people he wasn’t his father’s son? Gil loathed that he knew Malcolm feared there might be some truth to those early accusations, that Martin _had_ tried to get him to stab one of the victims. He’d never tell Gibbons that. He knew Jessica wasn’t privy to that particular fear of Malcolm’s, and he doubted Martin Whitly would ever confess to doing that to his son, if it truly happened.

Dani put a hand on his shoulder. “Gil, are you okay? You look awful.”

He looked like he’d aged twenty years and he knew it. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “I need to sleep but I can’t.”

“Now you sound like him,” she said as he thumbed the doorbell.

“I know.”

She wet her lips, looking as if she wanted to reassure him but didn’t. Dani knew Malcolm’s chances of survival were dwindling. 

The maid let them in. Ainsley wasn’t with her mother. He wondered if she was upstairs, drugged into some rest – because he knew Jessica wasn’t above slipping her kids a mickey if it meant they could sleep peacefully – or had Ainsley needed to get away from this horror. He had his answer quickly, seeing her stagger down the hall, still half asleep. She’d definitely had some of her mother’s benzos on board. 

Jessica, on the other hand, seemed to have skipped them for herself. She was still in the living room as if she had never left, sitting on the couch trying to drink tea with shaking hands. Eve had returned. She had her arm around Jessica. He knew Jessica didn’t have many friends left. Most had abandoned her twenty years ago, and those who did still speak to her often only did so because they didn’t want to insult a Milton. He didn’t want to know what it felt like to know that you were only invited to so many parties only because of your name and that no one really actually wanted you around. He’d long ago given up trying to talk her into moving or at least go back to being a Milton.

“Mom! You can’t just slip your valiums into my drinks,” Ainsley groaned, holding a hand to her forehead.

“You needed the rest.” Jessica shook off Eve’s arm and stalked over to Gil and Dani. “That man! He was here trying to get me to say Malcolm isn’t missing, that he hurt some woman and is hiding out with his daddy’s death buddy.”

Gil held out a hand to her. “I know, Jess. Gibbons tried that with me. I told him that his pet theory was only going to muddy the waters. At least the Brass managed to talk him out of saying it during the press conference.”

“I missed it?” Ainsley folded into a chair. “Mom!”

“You didn’t need to hear it,” Jessica snapped.

“It didn’t say much,” Eve added. “Just the detective there, talking about Malcolm being gone and asking anyone if they had any information. And the FBI guy suggesting there is a tie into the Junkyard Killer.”

“I thought that was a mistake,” Dani muttered and Gil agreed.

“Meredith threw him out of here” Jessica wrapped her arms around herself. Gil, it sounded like he plans to arrest me or Ainsley. What am I supposed to do?”

He took her hand. “Let Meredith handle it and say nothing. Do what I hope suspects never do. Remain silent. You and Ainsley have done nothing wrong, and I know that. They can’t arrest you. The most he can do is make your life uncomfortable for a few hours.”

“I’m already uncomfortable, Gil. I should have been the one to do a press conference, not you. He’s _my_ son and I’m not doing anything to help.” Jessica’s eyes gleamed. 

“That’s not true,” Eve said. 

“It is. I _should_ have done the press conference.”

Gil walked her back to the couch and tried to get her to sit. She complied reluctantly. “Jessica, it wouldn’t have been a good idea.”

“For the same reason you kept calling him Malcolm Bright during the conference?” Eve asked, “And not Malcolm Whitly.”

“You’re afraid if people know he’s the Surgeon’s son, they won’t help,” Jessica whispered. 

“I’m sorry,” he said at the same time Dani said, “Yes.”

Jessica’s eyes gleamed wetly. “He was just a little boy. He had nothing to do with anything my husband did. You cops tried to blame him and he ended up so scared he couldn’t talk for months,” she snarled, then whipped up a hand. “Sorry, Gil. I know you didn’t do that but the detectives back then did.”

“I remember.” Gil had hated that. They had grilled a child like he was a hardened criminal, bordered on violating his rights. Malcolm left the process so terrified, so broken all he could do was cling to his mother and to Gil whenever he’d show up to check on the boy. That’s when it really started. Jess had seen Malcolm go to him time and again and she let Gil into their lives.

“I won’t let anyone blame him for any of this. I just want…I want people to know how good my son is, how sweet, how troubled. They _need_ to know he’s not his father.” Jessica put her hands over her face for a moment. Eve rubbed Jessica’s shoulder but the expression on her face puzzled Gil. Something was off but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “And because of that man, I can’t. I can’t even go on TV and beg for help because the feeling is a Whitly deserves whatever happens to him or worse, have someone make it seem like he’s following in his father’s footsteps and kidnapping people.”

“Gil and the team don’t think that, ma’am,” Dani said. “We’re working this with Malcolm as the victim.”

“You seem convinced of it.” Eve regarded Dani close and long. “I was beginning to think Jessica was the only one.”

Dani shook her head. “We know he’s the victim.”

“What do you know that you haven’t told me?” Jessica asked.

Gil steeled his jaw, wondering what he should say in front of non-family members. He knew there was only one thing he could say. “There are some things we have to keep to ourselves, Jess. Trust me, we know Gibbons is dead wrong. Gibbons knows he is but he’s got tunnel vision and armed with whatever bridges Malcolm burned when he left.”

Jessica sighed and Ainsley put a hand on her shoulder. “I trust you, Gil.”

“Thank you. You know we’re working this hard.”

“You look as tired as Malcolm usually does,” she replied. 

“And it must have shocking to see how my brother lives,” Ainsley said to Dani. “I hope that didn’t throw you off your game.”

“No, I’ve been to your brother’s loft before, spent the night,” Dani replied.

Jessica’s and Ainsley’s eyes widened but Gil was more interested in Eve’s expression. It was almost jealous. Dani flushed realizing how that sounds.

“Really?” Eve asked.

“He didn’t mention he was seeing anyone.” Jessica studied her, probably calculating how much some of the stuffier Miltons would hate Dani and annoyed that Malcolm had kept something from her.

“No, sorry. I had to take him home once after he was bit by the poisonous snake and the hospital jacked him up on sedatives. He couldn’t get his cuffs on so I helped him and left,” Dani said in a rush. “And then the box of drugs exploded on him and Gil asked me to babysit him because it was my fault really.” She sighed. “Fell asleep there. We’re just team mates…friends, nothing more.”

Gil wondered at the hesitation or maybe it was just Dani trying that word out for size. He knew she had her own issues, and Malcolm was not easy to be friends with at the best of times. 

“Then you know what he’s like,” Jessica said, but Gil kept his eyes on Eve who regarded Dani hostile for reasons he couldn’t guess it. Well, she had wanted to go out with Malcolm. She obviously didn’t like a rival or was it more? Was it more about what Dani was rather than she was a rival? 

Jessica dragged in a broken breath. “Oh, Gil, it’s been days. He’s going to be so sick, even if whoever has him isn’t hurting him. He’ll be hallucinating. That’s what benzos do when you withdraw.”

She would know, he realized and Jessica was right. Malcolm would be in the middle of withdrawal, and it was a dangerous thing to go cold turkey with benzos. Malcolm needed he and his team to step up their game.

“I know. We’re doing everything we can, Jess.”

She nodded. “You have always been his hero, Gil. He’s always trusted you to save him. I know you’ll do it now.”

Gil couldn’t swallow past the lump in his throat. Dani’s phone rang, startling them all. She answered, talking lowly but her eyes widened. “Gil!”

“What?”

“Lazar called the station. They want us back in.”

“Lazar?” Jessica asked. “Does he have my son?”

Dani shook her head, her thick mane of curls swaying. “And he is furious that the FBI intimated that he did.”

“Jess, we need to go. I’m sorry.”

“Just knowing he doesn’t have Malcolm helps.” She wet her lips. “Bring him home, Gil.”

“I will. You know we’re not going to stop.” But would it be enough to get him back alive? Gil couldn’t tell. All he could think about now that Jessica had mentioned it was how horrible Malcolm’s body and mind had to be in the middle of withdrawal on top of whatever else was happening. Whatever he did to help, it wasn’t enough or fast enough. He had some ideas but they would have to wait until they were away from this house. He only hoped Gibbons’ contributions to the press conference didn’t provoke Lazar to kill again just to prove a point.

XXX 

He couldn’t crawl fast enough. All Malcolm knew was if he could get to the lake, he’d be all right. He didn’t know why he was so certain of that but he ignored all the pain lashing his body as he powered through the fallen leaves and acorns to get to the cold, waiting water. If he could make it to the water, he’d be free. 

A hand erupted from the ground in front of him. It grabbed him by the throat, stopping his cry. The earth spat forth her arms and head. She moved with the jerky unreal motions of a zombie movie and looked at him with filmed eyes. “You’ll never find me now,” she slurred, her voice thick, dirty falling from her lips.

Malcolm reared back, breaking free of her fingers. He scuttled back, his damaged ankle hurting so badly he could barely hold in a scream. More hands burst forth, pinning him. The first girl pried herself free of her grave and loamed over him. She planted her decayed foot on his chest, pressing him down. The stench of rot filled his nostrils, gagging him. He dry retched unable to get free of her.

“You’ll never find me now. You’re in the box with me.”

He screamed until his vocal cords stripped and something hit him in the face. Malcolm moaned and then woke up. He blinked. The light in the cabin stabbed his eyes, making them tear up. Slowly the realization that he was out of the trunk sank in. He was on the chair again, Eve at his feet as she fixed bags of ice around his bad ankle. It barely looked like a foot and ankle any more, hugely swollen with purplish-black blisters ringing it. One popped as she moved the ice around, unleashing blood and fluid all over her fingers.

Swearing, Eve pulled back. She got to her feet and washed her hands in the kitchenette sink. “Are you finally back with me? You’ve been screaming and talking nonsense for about an hour now.”

He panted, unable to answer. Malcolm widened his eyes seeing the dead girl directly behind her. “Behind you,” he grated out, his tongue too big for his mouth. He was so dry.

Eve whipped around and then made a derisive noise. “There’s nothing there. Your mom is right. You’re just in full blown withdrawal, aren’t you?” She laughed as she filled a glass with water. “Enjoying your hallucinations? They must be a bitch from how you were shrieking. Sounded like you were in hell, which I suppose might be fitting.”

Malcolm watched the dead woman walk across the room and disappear. He dry retched again, hard. His tormented ribs ached from the motion. His incised wounds cracked and blood oozed.

“I looked it up after Jessica mentioned it. You’re going to be in for an even rougher time than I anticipated. Can’t say I feel bad about it. Too bad I can’t be sure it wouldn’t be traced back to me or I’d send the recording to your mother.” Eve set the glass down and turned on the camera she still had on the tripod. She was safely out of range as he dry heaved some more. She sat in the kitchen drinking and then refilled the glass. She popped a straw in it and then got out her mask.

After turning the camera back off, she brought the glass to him and put the mask on the table. She meant to wear it later, he was sure, but he couldn’t concentrate on that. The photophobia of withdrawal made his eyes burn and he trusted nothing they saw anyhow. She pushed the glass under his nose. “Drink and try not to puke it on me.”

Malcolm fumbled with the straw using his lips. He could hardly suck on it, his energy drained. The water made his scream-raw throat feel like he was gargling glass at first but the more he drank, the rehydrating tissues forgave him. Malcolm drank so fast and desperate, some of it drooled past his cracked, swollen lips. He didn’t care. He drank so much his belly ached. He might puke at that. He wasn’t sure he’d pee this out later because he was so dehydrated.

“Please, Eve,” he whispered. “I want to go home.”

“Oh, you eventually will.” She laughed and he knew she meant in a box. “And you’re back to calling me Eve. Do you even know exactly who you’re talking to?” She tapped his cheek. “Or did you decide it didn’t matter what you call me, I’m not letting you go.”

“Mother?” He chased the straw around, needing more.

Eve steadied it for him. “She was weeping last I saw her and drugging your sister to make her sleep because she’s too worked up.”

“Don’t kill my mother, Eve,” he said, ignoring the straw.

“You can’t save her, Malcolm.”

Tears flowed down his face. He didn’t think he could have cried as dehydrated as he was. The straw sat there forgotten. 

“In fact,” Eve jabbed the straw between his lips and he drank in jerks and fits because he couldn’t cry and suck at the same time. Malcolm forced himself to calm down because he needed the water. He recited a mantra he used sometimes after yoga to try and still his mind but it failed thanks to the dancing dead women in the kitchen. _Just a withdrawal symptom_ but they felt real. “your mother is beside herself because she can’t go on TV and make a plea for information because they’re afraid if the public knows a Whitly is missing they wouldn’t give a damn. Funny, I heard other people in her social circle say she was cold to her kids but that’s not the woman I saw tonight.” Eve made a face. “She is coming undone.”

“She loves us,” he whispered. “She’s not always good at the boundaries but she tries. You wanted her to suffer for what my father did. That’s what you saw tonight.”

Eve made a dismissive sound. “Maybe so. Anyhow Detective, Arroyo made a plea for information under your pseudonym or is it your legal name now? Guess it doesn’t matter.”

“No one saw you, did they when you took me?”

“I knew where your security cameras were. And honestly you have no friends so outside of your mother and sister, who is going to care you’re gone after a week? Or maybe you do have friend. You sleeping with that detective? You know the one I mean, the one with the gorgeous thick hair.”

“Dani,” he whispered. 

“Yes. Seems like she’s no stranger to strapping you into bed.” Eve put the glass on the table and lit a candle. 

“My friend,” he said, wanting more water. “Nothing more.” 

“I almost felt jealous there for a moment. How strange is that?” Eve leaned closer to the candle, something in her hand. Malcolm couldn’t focus on it because the light bothered him. He tried to keep his gaze trained on the shadows but there was nothing there but more nightmares. Telling himself they were in his head did nothing to make them go away. “It’s like I don’t want to share you with anyone.”

“Because you can’t divorce the part of you that’s decent from the part of you that wants revenge,” he rasped, turning his head to catch her eye. “You care about what Dani thinks of me because a part of you cares about me.”

“Too bad for that part then.” Eve jumped up and went to fetch her mask and a towel from the kitchen. She turned the recorder back on and she put on a voice modulator. 

Malcolm’s breath caught. Whatever she was planning on doing, he was going to hurt even more. 

“I’ve tried to think of what would balance the scales, Malcolm, but there isn’t much, is there?” She sat next to him, her hand moving to the candle again. He still couldn’t look at its brightness. “Did you know that the FBI thinks you kidnapped me?” Eve laughed, sounding like Darth Vader on laughing gas. “They intimated it on the press conference and pissed off someone called the Junkyard Killer.”

“What?” He couldn’t work his brain around that.  
“You were bringing him a gift, me in shackles apparently, but that didn’t go out over the airwaves. They grilled your mother and that detective about it. She was livid, and for that matter Arroyo looked ready to spit nails.”

“My boss…” he said, trying to minimize Gil’s importance to him. He couldn’t trust what Eve would do if she realized he was as much as father to him as his real one ever was. “He’s protective of the team.”

“I noticed. He could be a problem.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll give him a new case soon enough.”

“Is that a way to say leave him alone? Don’t worry. I have no beef with him and I certainly don’t want to bring the whole NYPD down on my head,” she replied. “I just find it funny how the FBI thinks you’re the same as your father. I guess I’m not that far off the mark then. You are the bad seed.”

“I really am not.” He said, leaning forward, nearly retching up his water. Malcolm clamped his jaw. He was not about the loose one ounce of the life sustaining stuff.

“So just going to keep fighting the sickness?”

“Unless you brought my benzos with you,” he grated out.

“Wouldn’t give them to you if I did. Do you know all your father’s victims by name, Malcolm?”

“Everyone. I could never forget.”

“Did you see them all before he killed them?”

“Never.” Malcolm shook his head. “Just one…called the cops after that. I’m…” He glanced over her head. The dead woman loomed over Eve, running her hands over the mask.

“Seeing one of them now?”

He could hear the smirk in her tone even through the voice modulation. “Yes.”

“Good. Does she look like my mother?”

“No, she’s young. She’s the last girl,” or at least the last he knew of. It was possible there were more in those days or potentially weeks his father had been drugging him. All that lost time that he was getting to the point he didn’t want to know about any more. “The twenty-fourth victim.”

“So, there were more? I’m not surprised. What was her name Malcolm? Shall I carve it into you?”

“I don’t know. She’s never been found.” He clamped his jaw again, breathing deep trying not to get sick. 

“Too bad for her. Do you know this Junkyard Killer?”

“I don’t remember him. He was a friend of my father’s. He says I’ve met him. My memory has holes.”

“Too many terrible things to hold inside a child’s head,” she said.

Was there pity in her tone? He couldn’t tell through the voice modulator. “Yes.”

“I could pity you. I truly could.” She grabbed up the towel. “But then how do I honor my mother’s memory? You’re never going to forget her.”

“I never will,” he promised, hoping maybe this could finally be a path to making her connect with him enough to stop all of this.

“Oh, I know.” She transferred something into her hand with towel and she pressed it into his thigh.

Malcolm shrieked as his skin sizzled. He threw up on her hand but Eve didn’t move it.

“Remember those gold name pendants that used to be so popular? Well, I had my mother’s all this time.”

He couldn’t speak as the gold pendant branded him, burning into his thigh with the stench of frying hair and skin. Finally, she moved it off him, bits of his flesh sticking to it. She tossed it onto the table next to the candle she had heated it up over. 

Malcolm dragged in deep breaths, tears forming anew. She mercilessly forced the straw back to his mouth.

“You might want to try to rehydrate again since you lost most of it there.”

Saying nothing, Malcolm drank again. Eve dragged it away from him quickly and set it just out of reach on the table. She got up and pulled another toy out of her bag. 

“Do you know how many fetish shops there are in New York City?” She swung the cat of nine tails, letting him see the fall. It ended in roses and something glinted on the leather. Was it metal thorns? “You know, I bet you do. Are you into pain, Malcolm? Is that why you don’t date? You just keep a herd of women you dominate?”

He shook his head. He wasn’t telling her that he was a masochist deep down, always looking for someone to punish him for the things he failed to do as a child, for the things his father had done. He had limits and she was already way past those. Nothing about this was sexual or fun. He was going to die here. “I’ve never hurt a woman.”

She laughed. “I guess that would make you different from your father. Too bad it won’t matter. Like I said, it’s really a shame you have all this unscarred skin. It’s tempting.”

“Think about that, Eve. It shouldn’t be. If this was just to punish me, should you be enjoying it? Please, it’s enough. You’ve done enough.”

“Maybe but we’ll try this anyhow.”

Eve cocked back her hand with the whip, her eyes boring into his. He didn’t look away, didn’t hide his pain. Her lips trembled as she studied his face. She didn’t hit him after all, losing her nerve for it. Making the cuts on his arms hadn’t bothered her as much but she had in her head the idea of suicide, the things she might have done to herself but this was different. Instead, she went to get something to do bandage changes.

“Why are you doing this? The bandages, the ice?”

“I want you to live longer. I’m not done yet. That foot looked horrible. I know I don’t have what it takes to cut it off and cauterize the wound,” she admitted, going into the kitchen, mixing something up in a bowl. 

At least there was that. If she was like him, she could have done that he thought bitterly. “I appreciate the ice,” he said. “It does show you are more than this, than all the horror, Eve. You can still stop this.”

“And what? You’ll tell them you never saw your captor?”

“You are wearing a mask,” he said as she sat with him.

“I suppose there’s that but you need to understand I just can’t let you go but I can keep you from getting infected until it’s time.” 

That’s when he learned what was in the bowl. Salt water. She painted all of his wounds with it as she bandaged him back up. This time he kept his nerve and didn’t cry as the salt burned and crusted each incision. He didn’t make a sound not even when she injected him again.

Malcolm kept the panicking for when she dragged him on the drop cloth back to the trunk. His pleas fell on consistently deaf ears. She dropped him hard into the trunk. His ankle hit the edge and he blacked out for a few seconds. He came to just in time to see the trunk close again with the dead girl curled up in the lid. She reached for him and Malcolm ran the one way he could. He raced deep into his mind, away from his pain, away from her grasping, dead fingers. He locked the door behind him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains mental health issues

Chapter Six

Gil hated what he was thinking. He had sent Dani off to investigate Eve as soon as they got back to the precinct while he and JT went off to do damage control. Gibbons, at least, was facing the fire from everyone’s bosses. If they ended up with another body, he was going to be sure that Gibbons was there for every last moment of the autopsy and do the family notifications. The night had been a long one, no new body and finally, early the next morning, Dani had something to report. JT was with her in Gil’s office when he got there and shut the door behind them.

“Talk to me.”

“I finally got some of the video from the building across the street,” JT said, bringing it up on his tablet. They crowded in to watch it. They saw someone cross the street and get buzzed into Malcolm’s building. There was, of course, no sound.

Whoever it is, they’re slender. I’m sure it’s a woman,” JT said. “But as you can see, big overcoat and a large hat, you can’t see any of her face.”

“She’s the right height to be Eve,” Gil mused.

“Eve isn’t Eve I don’t think,” Dani said, bringing all eyes to her. “I’ve tried to trace her back but the identity only goes back a few years. I can’t find out yet who she was before that. It’s obviously a fake identity, but I don’t know why. Potentially she could have changed her name to protect her family from the human traffickers. Some of them are people you wouldn’t want on your trail.”

Gil let out a long hiss of air. “Damn it, that’s what I was afraid of. I’m going to call Jessica. Dani, get a warrant so we can put a tracker on Eve’s car. If she’s smart, she won’t be taking her phone everywhere but let’s get someone on tracking that too.”

She bobbed her head. “Right away.”

“What are you thinking, Gil?” JT asked.

“Eve has insinuated herself into every part of Jessica’s life. She has been eager to help. But her affect is off.”

“She seemed jealous when she thought I was Bright’s lover,” Dani said. “That was blatant.”

JT’s eyebrows rose. “Really? You?”

Dani waved him off. “Because I’ve taken him home a couple of times. But wouldn’t it be weird for her to be jealous if she’s the kidnapper.”

“She did sleep with him first,” JT reminded her. “Which is also weird.”

“True and maybe it was less jealousy and more anger?” Dani posited. “They can look similar. If she took him and realizes he has a cop lover that wouldn’t stop looking for him that would make her nervous.”

“I think she needs looking into,” Gil said, typing in a number. It only rang twice before being answered. “Ainsley, it’s Gil.”

“Have you found him?” 

The desperation in her tone knifed his heart. “No, I’m sorry. Are you home with your mom?”

“No, I couldn’t stand being there. Mom is coming undone, Gil. I can’t hold her together alone. She wanted me to take some time off at my own place. Why?”

“Ainsley, promise me something. It’s vital.”

“I promise.”

Gil wished he could entirely trust her. “Is Eve with you?”

“Why would she be?”

“Stay away from her for now, okay?” he said because he couldn’t out rightly accuse Eve without a lot more evidence.

“Gil, what aren’t you telling me?”

“I don’t know anything yet, Ainsley and you absolutely have to keep this quiet.”

“I’m tired of everyone thinking I’m going to run on camera with this,” she snapped.

He didn’t remind her that she had done exactly that with her dying boyfriend. “It’s an occupational hazard. I’m just looking into Eve because she was the last one to talk to your brother and we found some blonde hairs in his apartment.”

Ainsley seized on that. “Was she ever there?” 

“Yes, and so have you. There was barely enough to attempt a DNA profile, and it won’t be done for a few more days. It doesn’t matter unless it comes back to neither of you.” He hadn’t asked Eve for hers yet because he hadn’t wanted to alert her on that first day they spoke, not until he knew for sure they could even get the profile. 

“I think she might be with Mother, Gil. Should I call her?” Ainsley’s worry came through.

“No, let me handle it. I don’t want to alarm Jessica, and I don’t want her to accidentally alert Eve if she is there. I’m not sure if Eve’s done anything wrong, Ainsley, but I also don’t want her to lawyer up. If you let her know we’re looking into her, she might.”

“I won’t say a word. I want my brother back. Gil, I was going to call you anyhow.” Ainsley said, a strange hesitation in her voice.

“Oh?”

“Dad’s out of solitary, and he’s called me. He heard the news, and he is livid. I won’t answer his calls again but he’s blowing up my phone.”

“You should have called me immediately.” Damn it, he didn’t need this distraction. “I’ll do what I can to deal with him.”

“Do you think he’d have an idea who might have done this? What if it was Lazar putting someone up to this?” 

“It’s possible. I’m going to call your mother, and then I’m going to Claremont. I’ll be sure to have them curtail his access to the phone.”

“Thank you. I just can’t right know, you know. I just can’t deal with him.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“Thank you.”

Gil let her hang up, and noticed JT and Dani staring at him. “Whitly is out of solitary and is bothering her. I’m going to go over there and see if he has any idea who’d kidnap his son, if it could have been Lazar sending in a surrogate to catch Malcolm with his pants down…literally.”

“Want back up?” JT asked.

Gil shook his head and then made a face. “Maybe. Actually, JT can you take over getting the warrants. Dani, if you’re willing, you’d be a great distraction for Martin. I hate setting you up like a sacrificial lamb like that but the man has been chained to a wall for two decades now. He would probably be more likely to open up to you than JT or me.”

“I can do it. Do you want me to go in alone in that case?” she asked.

“No. I’m the one who brought Whitly in. I would have been his last victim if Malcolm hadn’t warned me.”

His detectives made faces. JT shook his head violently. “I’m not sure I knew that.”

“He tried to slip me a tea cup full of ketamine and I would have drunk it if not for Malcolm. To be honest, I hadn’t believed the kid that his daddy was killing people, sounded fanciful especially in a household like that one. He just seemed so honest, so concerned that I listened.”

“Good thing. Are we going now?” Dani asked.

“Let me call and warn Jessica.”

“Do you think she can stop herself from confronting Eve?” Dani asked.

“Maybe. Here’s hoping Eve is off doing charity work somewhere else. JT, arrange to have both Ainsley and Jessica’s homes watched by cops, just say Lazar has made a threat in case the women protest or ask about it. I’ll tell Jess to tell Eve exactly that if she’s there. If this is directed at all the Whitlys which we can’t rule out, then I don’t want them to be able to make off with another victim while we rule Eve in or out.”

“Will do,” he replied.

Gil made his call. Eve wasn’t at Jessica’s. He told her to tell her the Lazar story. It was harder to convince her that this was just precautionary, that he knew nothing about Eve being involved. It shouldn’t have been since it was true. He had no proof of anything. He told her to only let in Ainsley or one of his team and he distracted her from Eve with the news that Martin was out of solitary and trying to contact Ainsley. He left her fuming, pocketed his phone and beckoned to Dani.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he said as they headed for his car.

“I know. Have to say, I’m not sure I want to meet the Surgeon,” she admitted.

“Trust your instincts and keep behind the line.”

“Line?”

“You’ll see.” Gil wished he could prepare her better but the truth was, he hadn’t been here in years himself. Malcolm had said his father had been rewarded a rather cozy room ala Al Capone thanks to the Saudi princes who still called on him for his medical knowledge. Gil wondered if they had returned Whitly to that space or if he was still being punished, returned to the general populace but not to something quite that prime. 

Dani tucked her arms closer to herself as they followed the orderly through the building. He didn’t blame her for being nervous. Claremont had an oppressive feel and he’d been thrilled when Malcolm had finally made a decade-long break from his father. Guilt that he’d driven Malcolm back echoed in his mind but Gil had no time for that now. He knew how much of a manipulative bastard Whitly was but if there was any part of him that actually cared about his son – and terrifyingly enough Gil thought Martin did love his son in his broken way – then he’d want to help. Of course, he could be wrong about Whitly caring for Malcolm but he didn’t think so. Malcolm had been his downfall and Whitly had to guess that it could happen. He could have killed his son on that camping trip and easily made it look like an accident. He would have been safe then but he gambled on his son’s loyalty and lost. Malcolm was too inherent good to keep a secret like that.

The orderly knocked on the door and when a tall, older African-American man opened the door their guide left them without a word. The man, David, didn’t let them in. He studied them both.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,” David said.

Gil nodded. “I’m surprised you still work here.”

He shrugged. “I’m compensated well for dealing with all this. You know the rules.”

“We do,” Dani said.

David stepped back and let them in. Martin Whitly had a TV on, resting his arm on his desk amidst a bunch of paperwork he seemed to be ignoring. His hands were uncuffed but he was chained to the wall. Dani’s eyes opened slightly before she caught herself. She glanced down at the thick red line on the floor but didn’t take a step back. She wasn’t near it to begin with. Before David or either detective could say a word, Whitly stood.

“I wondered if they would send you, Officer Arroyo,” he said, his gaze flicking briefly to Dani but came back to Gil almost immediately. His body stiffened, angry but still curious.

“It’s Lieutenant now. I know you’re aware that Malcolm has been kidnapped.”

“Ah, Ainsley must have reported my call. If you’re here, I’m assuming you haven’t come to tell me you’ve found my son.” Whitly’s lips twitched, a frown tugging the corners down.

“We wanted to know would Paul Lazar take Malcolm?” Dani asked.

The frown deepened. “I heard what that man from the FBI said. That isn’t what he think, is it? He doesn’t believe Lazar took him. He thinks Malcolm is working with Lazar.”

Gil blinked, surprised at Whitly’s insight but maybe he shouldn’t be. Malcolm never hid that he learned about murder from his father. “He does.”

“We know that isn’t true but could Lazar have sent a woman in to catch Malcolm off guard?” Dani asked.

Whitly tore his gaze away from Gil to study her. Dani bore it well. Whitly sat down, a strange expression on his face. “So, that’s how they caught my boy. Ever since I saw the broadcast, I wondered. Malcolm isn’t easy prey but a man has his needs.” He flashed that ingratiating smile of his at Dani who shrugged it off. “But since you asked, it’s been twenty years, Detective Arroyo. He’s not the man he was when he followed me around. He’s a cautious creature obviously, since he’s been more successful at avoiding the likes of you two.”

“He didn’t try to drag his son into his schemes,” Dani replied. “You did.”

“I doubt he’d have children.” A look of annoyance flashed across Whitly’s face. “But you have a point. Malcolm was my Achilles heel but I can’t hold it against the boy. I want him found, Detective Arroyo. I want my boy _back_.” He couldn’t hide the fury in those last words.

“That’s why we’re here. Could Lazar have set Malcolm up?”

Whitly rotated his chair lazily, mulling it over. “Possible. If he thinks Malcolm is a threat then he will remove him, though he really truly did like my son. Lazar has always found a way to kill by proxy.”

“At a distance, yes we know,” Dani said. “He was using a car compactor at the junkyard.”

“Ah, so that’s why his sobriquet is so…unseemly. And I thought the Surgeon was a little too on the nose.”

“You’re wasting our time, Dir. Whitly,” Gil said.

“I don’t mean to be. Seriously.” The lines around his eyes deepened. “Yes, Lazar is more than capable of killing to protect himself but he would be more likely to shoot Malcolm than to kidnap him. Oh, I know he kidnaps his victims but they fit his mission. He has a preference for the …addicted and those he finds immoral. Stems from what happened to his mother.” He spread his hands with a little shrug. “But Malcolm wouldn’t bring him any…release. He’d know that the NYPD would be breathing down his neck and he most definitely wouldn’t want his mission to end. He has work to do. No, it would be quicker and cleaner to just shoot him. Though I suppose it is possible he’s taken on a student of his own and sent her after my son. She’d have the right bait, I assume. Malcolm never did talk to me about his preferences in that area.” Whitly caught Gil’s eyes. “Maybe he told you.”

Gil ignored him and Whitly stood, crossing over toward Dani, stopping when his leash yanked him back. He studied her again. “You like my son, don’t you, detective?”

Her cheek muscles jumped as she steeled herself. “Malcolm is a team mate and has a unique way of seeing things. He’s been helpful.” She smiled slightly. “He brings us candy. So yes, he’s my friend, and I want to find him before he’s hurt worse than he’s already has been.”

Whitly scowled, his fists clenching. “He would have to be hurt, wouldn’t he? You’re wasting time here, detectives. There’s nothing I can tell you. You would probably know more than I do about Lazar after all these years.”

Gil wasn’t sure that was true but he didn’t think he’d get more out of Whitly on the subject. He pulled out his phone and scrolled to a picture he’d taken surreptitiously of Eve. He stepped to the line and held it up to Whitly. “Do you know this woman, Dr. Whitly?”

He thought for a moment Whitly would dismiss him but instead he took a close look, studying ever detail.

“I don’t get many visitors here, Detective and none since the little…incident.” He smiled in a way that let Gil know Malcolm had been exactly right. Whitly had set it all up so he could play the hero for his children. “But no, I have no idea who she is. She’s lovely. Why is she in my house?”

“She’s working with Mrs. Whitly to raise money for a group that stops human trafficking,” Dani said.

“Really? Well, Jessie always did like helping others. She’s quite altruistic for someone raised Old Money.” He spat those words out like gristle. Gil knew that the Miltons had felt Whitly unsuitable for Jessica because he wasn’t rich enough – a freaking cardiothoracic surgeon, though he was probably still a student when they first got together because he knew they married young. “Why are you asking about her? You’re not telling me my _wife_ let someone into their lives that would hurt our son?” There was something subtly mocking yet deadly serious in his tone. The very idea insulted him.

“Ex-wife,” Dani countered, “And we’re looking into the lives of everyone around Malcolm. They were dating, well attempting to at any rate. Do you know her?”

Whitly shook his head. “No, but…”

“But what, sir?” Dani prompted.

“There’s something about those eyes. Let me see her again.” 

Gil held the phone closer, just over the line. He had no real fear of a man chained to a wall who wasn’t in half the shape he was. 

Whitly wrinkled his nose, making no moves to grab the phone or Gil. “No, I don’t know her but those eyes, they do remind me of Julissa’s.”

“Julissa Lostetter?” Gil asked, and Dani glanced his way, questioningly. She probably didn’t have all of Whitly’s victims memorized.

“If you wanted to know what I can do to help, that’s it Detective Arroyo. Look at the families. If someone wanted to hurt me by hurting those who matter to _me_ that’s where you’d find them. She had children.”

“I’m on it.” Dani had out her phone texting someone, most likely JT, to start a search for Lostetter’s children. 

“Add property searches to that. If it’s her and she’s holding Malcolm somewhere, it’s not going to be in an apartment where neighbors might hear.”

“Unless she has him sedated,” Whitly said with true expertise in the subject matter.

Gil shook his head. “Malcolm has a very high tolerance for sedatives. He doesn’t stay under long and he does a lot of screaming from the night terrors when he is under.”

Whitly made a disgusted noise and to Gil’s shock he looked actually upset by that. “And you would know?”

“All too well,” Gil replied. It might not be wise to let Martin know just how close he was to his son but at this point he figured the man has long ago assumed as much since Gil had often been the one to bring the boy here.

“Even I know about the nightmares and sleep waking,” Dani said. “He fell asleep at the station, came out screaming as he ran me over. Nearly got himself shot. Whoever has him either has him somewhere remote or is constantly sedating him.”

Which would leave Eve out if it was the latter, Gil realized. She was away too often. No, it was a property somewhere and relatively close if she was driving in and out of the city daily. His phone buzzed and he looked at it to see a text from JT saying he had the tracking warrant. 

“One last thing, Dr. Whitley, don’t call Ainsley again. Jessica’s gotten an injunction. The staff here won’t be allowing you anyhow,” Gil said.

Whitly shot him a drop-dead look. “She should let Ainsley make her own decisions.”

“She did. Dani, let’s go. Hopefully, Dr. Whitly, you might have just given us a vital piece of the puzzle,” he said, steering Dani toward the door as David moved to open it.

“Bring my son back, Detective Arroyo. He doesn’t deserve this,” Whitly said.

“No, he doesn’t. Maybe now you understand what you put your victims and their families through.” He cast a look Whitly’s way. “But I doubt it.”

Whitly said nothing as he and Dani left but he felt the man’s gaze burning into a spot between his shoulders. 

“Do you think it could be her, Gil?”

“I think it’s a place to start.”

XXX

Eve hadn’t been in to see Jessica today. The FBI and the NYPD had placed people around both Whitly women in case Lazar had been agitated enough to take action. That was something she hadn’t anticipated. It didn’t matter. She had time to kill them once things died down. She might not be able to keep Malcolm alive until then but that was beside the point.

Staring down at him in the trunk, she thought killing him might actually be a mercy. He had been screaming when she got there but when she opened the trunk he didn’t move. His big blue eyes were open but the lights were most definitely not on. She pulled him up in the trunk letting him rest against the side of it. He sat there, modeled into the position she put him into as if he were a mannequin. 

Eve poked his ruined ankle and outside of a low moan, he did nothing. He barely even blinked. She fetched him a glass of water and a straw but he didn’t focus on it. She slipped the straw into his mouth.

“Drink Malcolm.”

He obeyed mechanically. She let him drink a small amount and then took it away. She got the cattle prod and set it next to the box as she got down on the floor next to it. She wanted it handy just in case he was trying to fake her out. He wasn’t. He didn’t move, just stared out into infinity. She move his hand up like he was cupping a bowl of soup and he left it that way. He’d broken. There was nothing left behind his eyes. Malcolm had gone where she couldn’t hurt him anymore. Had her mother done the same? Had Whitly kept her alive long enough for this to happen? Had she fought to the end? No one knew except Whitly, of course, and she had been too afraid to try and get in to see him. She would have to sign in. There would be records but part of her wanted to try. She wanted to show him the video of his son suffering. Could she sneak a weapon in? Sure, they would know it was her but what jury would convict her?

Eve stroked Malcolm’s hair off his face. He didn’t even flinch. She wanted him back, not to hurt him, not this time. This was more horrible to witness than him bleeding. She leaned against the trunk. “Mom, this is hard, so much harder than I thought it would be.” 

Eve wiped at the tears on her face. She hated herself for them but maybe Malcolm had been right. Part of her knew this would do nothing to balance the ledger his father had left behind. For the first time since she’d started her plan, Eve began to doubt. Something from a long-ago Asian history class surfaced in her mind, a quote from Confucius, _Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves_. In breaking Malcolm, had she dug her own grave?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written before the fall finale so I'm a little proud of myself for predicting Lazar's mother's involvement though given stats on serial killers it was a good guess.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Gil tugged his jacket tighter squinting into the darkness. They had gotten with the local PD and were waiting for the warrant for Mallory Lostetter’s cabin in the woods. It was the perfect place to hold someone. He, JT, and Dani were with Officer Seagraves, a local, in the woods just outside the building, freezing in the night. Seagraves had several of her men in the woods as well. Everyone parked a half mile back and let the locals lead the way on foot just so the sounds of the vehicles wouldn’t alert Eve. They hadn’t even needed the tracking device once they did a quick search on Lostetter. The last DMV picture of Mallory was years old and fuzzy but she had been living as Eve for some time. As crappy as the photo had been, no one on the team doubted that Mallory was Eve.

They couldn’t just bust in without a warrant. If Bright wasn’t in the cabin and they showed their hand too soon, they might never find him, especially if they allowed her to lawyer up or gave her time to destroy evidence. He just wished the locals would hurry the hell up with the warrant. Worse, what if the judge denied it, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to issue the search warrant in the first place. Gil knew it could come to that. 

He could barely see JT and Dani across the clearing, watching the back of the cabin while he staked out the front with Seagraves. She had the rest of her men a few hundred yards out to minimize sounds that might alert Mallory. Gil shoved his cold, gloved hands into his jacket pocket. Hard candies knocked against his fingers. He resisted the urge to open one, not sure if the sounds of crinkling plastic would carry like a firecracker in the still of the night. The woods in summer were never quiet but as winter edged in the animals had gone to ground and the insect with them.

A scream from inside the house ripped the night. Gil drew his weapon as did Seagraves. 

“I’m going in,” he whispered to her, beckoning JT and Dani to him. Seagraves nodded and pointed for two of her men to go around back. She joined Gil at knocking on the door.

“Police, open the door,” she called and Gil let her take the lead. No point in aggravating the local PD.

To his surprise, Eve did open the door. Maybe she thought she could pass off the scream as a loud TV or more likely knew if the cops were there thirty seconds after the scream that they had already been staking her out and that it was over. Her eyes narrowed at him and Dani. She barely glanced at JT.

“Detective Arroyo…how did you end up out here?”

“It didn’t take us long once we realized your real name is Mallory Lostetter,” he said and the color drained from her face. “Where is he, Mallory?”

“He’s not here and don’t you need a warrant to just come barging in. I want you to go.” She crossed her arms but she sounded tired, almost too tired to try and bluff her way through. He didn’t care because that scream hadn’t come from her, which meant Malcolm was alive and that’s all that mattered to him.

“Exigent circumstances,” he said. “Which means I don’t need to wait on the search warrant that’s coming because I believe there’s an immediate threat to someone’s life. Officer Seagraves, restrain Ms. Lostetter while we search.” Gil motioned for Dani and JT to take the back rooms but they were already in motion, having no need for his instructions.

“Gladly.” Seagraves took out her cuffs and restrained Eve on the couch, hands behind her back. She didn’t put up a fight, looking like it had all gone out of her. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, mommy,” she whispered as he scoped out the kitchenette. Nothing.

“Nothing back here, Gil,” JT called. “Not a lot of places to hide.”

“Same here,” Dani added, reappearing.

Gil swept his gaze over the room and it stopped at the steamer trunk. “Oh god no.” He ran across the room as his detectives joined him. He flipped the locks and tore the lid open. His heart stopped and invisible hands crushed the air out of him as he saw Malcolm curled up inside, naked and caked in sweat, blood, vomit and piss. He reached for him.

JT grabbed him. “No, Gil.”

That snapped him out of his daze and he pulled out his cell phone. “I am so sorry, Malcolm. Just hang in there, kid. We’ll have you out in a minute.”

After they’d take the most degrading photos of him for evidence. Not until he wouldn’t be able to scrub the images from his mind with all the bourbon in the world. He took the photos by rote, and he heard JT or Dani or maybe both doing the same. He hated it but at the same time he was grateful for them because his own hands shook and they needed pristine evidentiary photos. He wasn’t leaving Malcolm in that box until CSI arrived to do it for them. The fact that Malcolm hadn’t moved at all, had made no sounds, since they opened the lid turned Gil’s heart to polar ice.

“He had to pick now to start screaming again,” Eve said. “Guess it wouldn’t have mattered, not if you were already outside. I promised Mom I’d pay them all back.”

“JT, help me get him out,” Gil said, ignoring Eve. 

Dani came over with the afghan from the back of the couch. She draped it over Malcolm’s hips as Gil slipped his arms around Bright’s shoulders. Horror crept in because Malcolm had yet to acknowledge them despite the fact his eyes were open. The ice around Gil’s heart thickened. Was he still asleep? That was the best option, right? Gil reminded himself that he’d seen Malcolm run around eyes wide open but still be in deep slumber. Squatting down, JT clutched Malcolm’s legs.

“Man, Gil, look at his ankle. She hobbled him,” JT said, his voice tight. He might never have entirely warmed to Malcolm – as Gil predicted he wouldn’t – but he still had empathy.

“Why isn’t he talking?” Dani asked as they lifted him free of the trunk.

“His lights are on but no one’s home.” Eve giggled. “He’s gone somewhere far away, maybe with all the dead girls he saw in the kitchen. He’s beyond his pain. I wish I were beyond mine but not like this. He’s on the road to madness.”

“I’m beginning to think you’re halfway there too, woman,” JT snapped.

“Seagraves, call in EMS,” Gil said as he and JT settled Malcolm on the floor. Malcolm stared up into the lights so Gil sheltered his eyes with his hand. When he took his hand away, Malcolm had closed his eyes. “You’re going to be all right now, Malcolm. You’re safe.” He stroked Malcolm’s shoulder as Dani swaddled him better with the afghan. She took care to leave the blackish blimp passing itself off as his ankle free of the warm material. He nodded to JT who mimicked the gesture and stalked over to Eve.

“Mallory Lostetter, or if you prefer Eve Blanchard, I’m placing you under arrest for the kidnapping of Malcolm Bright.”

“Or Whitly, if you prefer.” Eve giggled again, her head sagging. “I tried, Momma, I tried to even the score. I’m sorry I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, you’re not entirely in the house either, are you? I’m sure we’ll be tacking on a bunch more charges but for now, kidnapping will do,” JT said, turning to Seagraves. “Want to go put her in your car?”

“I’ll have someone take her to our precinct first and arrange for transport into the city from there.” Seagraves stood Eve up.

JT took a step toward the camera on the tripod that faced a chair that rested under a D-ring in the hefty beams over. He stopped short. “Nope, better not touch anything else until the warrant gets here.”

“I’ll expedite that too,” Seagraves said. 

“Detective Arroyo, you be sure his _father_ sees those pictures you just took,” Eve grinned.

“Get her out of here,” Dani snarled.

“Tell him Julissa Lostetter finally got justice,” Eve continued, trying to tug out of Seagraves’s grip.

“Don’t worry. Whitly’s already guessed. Apparently you have your mother’s eyes,” Gil replied, patting Malcolm’s arm as Bright shuddered and moaned softly at whatever he was seeing inside his head.

Eve sobbed, her whole body quaking. She clamped her jaw against the wave of emotion. “Just don’t tell him I feel bad about it. Malcolm isn’t a bad man. I liked him but nothing should remain of Whitly. No one gets justice while part of him is still on this earth.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Seagraves said, hauling Eve for the door.

“It’s over now,” Gil said to Malcolm. “You’re safe.”

Malcolm had opened his eyes again but Gil doubt he saw anything. For Malcolm, it wasn’t over and he was far from safe.

Dani put a hand on Gil’s shoulder. “JT and I will manage the search once the warrant gets here. You go with Bright to the hospital. He needs you there.”

“I’m in charge, Dani. I should be here.”

“We’ve got this, Gil,” JT added. “The kid’s got no one else right now. He’ll need someone to speak for him at the hospital. If he comes to, someone will have to get his statement. It should be you.”

Gil took Malcolm’s still, cold hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, both of you.”

“No problem. He’s one of us,” JT said. “He might annoy the living hell out of me but he’s one of us. And no one, no matter who they are, deserves this.”

“No, they don’t.” Gil fought to retain control. Eve had no way of knowing the full extent of what she’d done. Malcolm already had nightmares about steamer trunks and people locked inside. Now she had turned him into the boy in the box and Gil knew nothing would ever be the same for this man he saw as his own son. He could only pray he and the others would be enough to keep Malcolm from shattering like antique porcelain. From the vacant look in his eyes, they were probably already far too late. “I’m so sorry, Malcolm,” he whispered. “I’m sorry we didn’t figure it out sooner.”

Malcolm didn’t respond. As EMS came in and began to work, Gil stepped out and began to weep.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Gil stretched, his back aching. He didn’t know if it was his position on the NYPD or Jessica’s money but the hospital had been talked into bringing two reclining chairs into Malcolm’s room. Jessica slept in the second bed while he and Ainsley put the recliners all the way back and slept that way. That way they could be here twenty four-seven even though Malcolm didn’t seem to realize they were there at all. After three days of it, his body assured him he wasn’t getting any younger but he wasn’t going anywhere. _Nice thought_, his mind growled. _What if he never comes out of it_?

Malcolm had spent those days sleeping or worse, awake and staring. His therapist had brought along a friend, Dr. Marchetti, who specialized in trauma. The psychiatrist had explained akinetic catatonia to them. Malcolm allowed them to position him like a doll, making it easy for the nurses, and the orthopedic surgeon was relieved that at least Malcolm wasn’t trying to go for walks after the ankle surgery. Malcolm would mimic them whenever Jessica or Gil tried to interact with him. He seemed less inclined to follow Ainsley’s lead for whatever reason. The only words he had spoken were to parrot something the three of them had said to Malcolm. Marchetti seemed to feel Malcolm, with constant reassurance and being made to feel safe, would come out of it, and that some of it could easily be the result of his abrupt benzo withdrawal. Eve, on the other hand, seemed to be sinking into psychosis, having ended up sent to a secure psychiatric hospital a little less violent than Claremont, ironically.

Gil had been in touch with Dani and JT almost constantly and had gone into work to arrange things with his bosses. They allowed him time off to be here and he was grateful to that because if someone was going to reach past Malcolm’s pain and pull him free it was the three people in this room. He wondered if Ainsley had called her father back and told him Malcolm had been rescued or had she let him find out from the news. Gil knew he hadn’t bothered even though Whitly had considerable narrowed the field.

He heard voices in the hall: JT and Dani. They hadn’t been here yet, handling all the things he just didn’t have it in him to deal with. Jessica heard them too, reaching over to finger comb Malcolm’s hair out of his open, staring eyes. Ainsley was out of the room, having gone on a coffee run for them. He’d volunteered but she wanted him to stay, saying he needed to be here. He didn’t argue.

Dani and JT strolled in, took one look at Malcolm’s vacant gaze and froze. JT paled, shaking, and walked right back out. Gil and Dani stared after him and together went out into the hall. JT leaned against the wall, breathing hard. He lifted his eyes to meet theirs.

“Sorry, I just need a moment.”

“What’s up?” Dani asked, putting a hand on his arm.

“You know I was in Afghanistan.” He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “A couple of my buddies came back with that stare. One’s still in a VA mental hospital, lost for years now. The other recovered enough to eat his gun a few years later.”

Gil winced. “JT, if this is too much for you, we’ll understand.”

“No, I just need to work up to it. I thought maybe by now…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I want to be here because, you know what, I think he’d come here if our positions were switched if only to annoy the shit out of me.” JT offered up a thin smile.

Snorting, Gil clapped a hand on JT’s shoulder. “Don’t let him fool you, he enjoys it and he likes you in spite of what I said on day one. Mostly I knew you wouldn’t take well to his quirks. If he didn’t like you, he’d ignore you. He’s just not good at making friends.”

“God,” Dani whispered, and JT quirked his eyebrows at her. “The day he was high, the look on his face when I said, ‘that’s what friends are for,’ it broke my heart. Scared me, really. He looked so desperate and so excited to have a new friend. So, this isn’t easy but I’ll be here as much as I can, Gil.”

“I know he’ll appreciate it.”

“And I wanted to give Mrs. Whitly a heads up to get her lawyer over here because Gibbons is making noises about coming here to interview Malcolm,” she added.

“He does know he’s catatonic and mute, right?” Gil growled. “I distinctly remember sitting that ass down and telling him so myself.”

“I think he believes Malcolm’s malingering, and I have no idea what he’s thinking. It was pretty obvious Eve and Malcolm weren’t working together.” Dani made a face.

“All right. Jess’ll get Meredith here, and I’ll see how many of his doctors I can get in the middle of this. I’m sure they’ll enjoy being told they don’t know what they’re talking about. Faking it.” Gil balled up his fist, truly wanting to hit something but it would get him nowhere. He let out a sigh. “JT, when you feel up to it, join us. If you don’t, that’s all right too.”

JT nodded. “Thanks.”

Gil let Dani fill in Jessica on the latest nonsense and Jessica wasted no time in contacting Meredith. He gestured for Dani to take his chair. She sat and took Malcolm’s hand. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to stop by sooner, Malcolm. It looks like they’re taking good care of you,” Dani said, and he turned his head toward her. His face remained expressionless but his eyes traced her face.

“I think he likes your voice,” Jessica said.

Dani smiled wanly. Gil knew her well enough to know this wasn’t easy on her. “Good. I miss your energy around the office, Bright. Edrisa has a big back log to deal with or she’d be here too. I bet you’d like that.”

For a moment Gil thought Malcolm might acknowledge that but he merely blinked.

“Edrisa?” Jessica asked.

“The medical examiner. I think she has a bit of a crush on your son. The flirting is so…awkward.” Dani laughed softly.

“That’s a word for it,” JT said from the doorway. “Though I’m not sure he even registers it.”

“He’s not good at flirting.” Jessica sighed, taking her son’s other hand. “He doesn’t seem to realize he’s good looking young man, that part of him got broken long ago.”

“Your mom’s right, Bright. You have beautiful blue eyes.” Dani squeezed his hand, her voice breaking a little. “I know I miss the spark in them.”

“See, Malcolm? You have good friends after all,” Jessica said. “I know you always feel so alone but they didn’t rest until they got you back and look, they’re still here.” Her lip trembled. “I wish you could talk to them.”

Malcolm didn’t react. Gil glanced away, not sure he could keep looking at Jessica or Malcolm and keep his own emotions contained. He knew it had taken months to get Malcolm talking when he was a child. It could easily take that long to draw him out of his own mind this time as well. He might never come out and this would be it for him, like the soldier JT knew. Gil had no idea how he could possibly handle that and knew for a fact Jessica couldn’t.

“If you did have something to say, I might even tell you what the JT stands for in return.” JT smiled. “You trying to guess has been mildly amusing though. Jehovah, best guess yet.”

Malcolm made a soft sound and closed his eyes. Jessica pulled the sheet up closer to his chin.

“He’s been sleeping a lot. The doctors say it’s for the best,” Jessica said.

Ainsley darted into the room holding a cardboard six-pack holder with three coffees in it. She looked over her shoulder. “I think there’s a detective coming our way.”

“Damn it and Meredith isn’t here yet.” Jessica took out her phone, texting someone. Gil assumed Meredith or maybe one of the doctors.

Special Agent Gibbons didn’t knock or wait to be invited in. He came striding through the door like he expected to make the arrest of his life. JT and Dani joined Gil in shielding Malcolm from view.

“Lieutenant Arroyo,” Gibbons said, almost as if his name was a curse.

“Special Agent Gibbons. What brings you here?” Gil said, noticing Ainsley had pulled out here phone. He didn’t doubt she was going to record this and he didn’t care. Gibbons’s bad behavior deserved it. 

“I have questions.”

“And you think Bright can answer them? I’ve already told you Malcolm is non-responsive,” Gil retorted, the chains on his temper slipping a few links.

“I don’t want you in here bothering my son.” Jessica stalked right up to him. She rarely backed down to anyone which was one of the things Gil admired about her. “He’s the _victim_, not a suspect. And if I understand things correctly, your case is the Junkyard Killer, _not_ Mallory Lostetter’s kidnapping of my son. Even if he could answer, he wouldn’t have to. What happened to him isn’t under your jurisdiction.”

Gil smirked, watching Gibbons’ expression sour. Obviously he hadn’t spent enough time with Jessica, didn’t know how much of a force of nature she was. He’d gladly let her tear this pain in his side a new one.

“The cases could be linked,” Gibbons argued, “And I’m not convinced that there’s anything wrong with him and that Arroyo isn’t simply sheltering Bright. He’s been known to do that.”

“Oh really? Fine, have a look and say it to his mother’s face again how Malcolm is faking it.” Gil stepped aside and motioned for Dani and JT to do the same. Dani didn’t go far. Gil reached down and shook Malcolm’s shoulder. “Wake up, Malcolm.”

Malcolm opened his eyes, leaving them trained on the ceiling. Gil gently positioned his head so he was staring right at Gibbons. Malcolm didn’t move when Gil pulled his hands away. Gibbons squirmed.

“Bright, I have questions for you that you had better answer,” Gibbons said but a seed of doubt had crept into his tone.

“He might say a word or two,” Jessica said. “He was parroting a little yesterday. He’s not in there, Special Agent. My son is hiding deep inside himself after being forced into a steamer trunk for days only to be brought out to be tortured by his kidnapper.”

“And you know this isn’t part of a scheme, them working with Lazar? It seems that your son and the Junkyard Killer were talking to each other in the tunnel, something you lied about, Bright. I need answers and I need them from you before Lazar kills again,” Gibbons growled and Bright’s hand shook. Gil almost wanted to let this go on because it was reaching Malcolm but at what cost. Before he could intervene, Gibbons added, “Before he comes for _you_ because he knows you can lead us back to him.”

Malcolm’s heart rate started screaming through the vitals sign monitor as it skyrocketed. Gil held up a hand to Gibbons. “Enough. You’re terrifying him, and he’s not going to respond, Gibbons. He _can’t_!”

“Looks like he can.” Gibbons pointed to the monitor. “He sure as hell understands what’s going on.”

Gil fought to suppress the urge to deck Gibbons. “He’s catatonic, not a vegetable. He hears you and you’re telling someone who is currently helpless that a serial killer is going to come for him. Now enough.” He slashed his hand toward Gibbons.

Gibbons curled his lip at Gil. “Will it be enough when Lazar kills again because Bright’s pretending to know nothing and conveniently playing at being insane, just like his father?”

Alarms sounded on the EKG machine as Malcolm’s heart rate climbed higher. Jessica took his hand, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Oh Malcolm, no, it’s okay, son. You’re nothing like your father. You’re safe here. No one is going to get you here.” She twisted on the mattress, her eyes hot as a torch. “Damn you, look at what you’ve done. You want to know how Lazar thinks? Go question my ex-husband. He’s out of solitary, and he has always known more than he’s told. Malcolm was his victim then and again right now. Leave him be.”

“And I’m going to insist you stop harassing my patient,” Dr. Marchetti said, running into the room with another doctor. Gil thought this one was the plastic surgeon. So that’s who Jessica had been texting. 

“And you are?” Gibbons asked with such a condescending tone, Gil couldn’t wait to see the fireworks. He’d yet to meet a doctor who’d stand for that.

“I’m Dr. Maddelena Marchetti, Mr. Bright’s psychiatrist, and this is Dr. Jordan Knox. I heard you tell Mrs. Whitly how you think her son is pretending. I can assure you that you are utterly wrong. Akinetic catatonia isn’t a common disorder but one we’ve known about for nearly a hundred and fifty years. It can be seen with trauma such as what Mr. Bright endured and is not that an uncommon reaction to Benzodiazepine withdrawal, which he was forced into during his captivity.” She glanced at Jessica. “And I hope Mrs. Whitly doesn’t mind me saying that much.”

“Violate HIPPA all you want if it makes this man leave my son alone.” Jessica clung to Malcolm’s hand.

“We’re very lucky he hasn’t had a seizure thanks to that withdrawal, or he may have when he was in that box for all we know. It would account for some of what the detectives saw when they found him. I’m reintroducing his benzos, which is the treatment for catatonia, but I can’t give you a timeline as to when Mr. Bright will become lucid again.”

“He has answers and I need them. If this so-called kidnapping is part of an elaborate scheme-”

“Let me cut you off there and piggybacking on Mrs. Whitly’s permission, there is nothing imaginary about the hundreds of stitches I had to put into Mr. Bright. If he’s lucky and if I’m as good as I know I am, he’ll have very faint scars except maybe where he was branded. No one is going to endure this level of pain and scarification for a scheme. There were nearly a dozen incised wounds per arm and if that doesn’t convince you, Dr. Rhodes, the orthopedic surgeon, will tell you all about how Mr. Bright will be lucky to walk without a limp for the rest of his days. He’s looking at months of physical therapy. Had his ankle swollen much more the vasculature would have been compromised and he could have lost his foot,” Knox said.

“And if that’s not enough, here,” Gil said, pulling up a picture on his phone. He stabbed it toward Gibbon’s face. “This is how we found him. Does this look like he’s going along with it? If you had been paying attention in the debriefing, you’d have seen this.”

“And you know we have video of Lostetter torturing him. You can’t watch that and think it was faked,” Dani snapped, the expression on her face two parts fury and one part horror. Gil felt the same. None of them had been able to watch Lostetter’s videos without looking away multiple times.

“So, I suggest you take Mrs. Whitly’s suggestion. Go to Claremont, interview Dr. Whitly. You know where they’re holding Lostetter, see if her lawyer will let her talk to you. But leave Malcolm alone,” Gil said, putting his phone down on the bed tray fearing he might actually crack the screen with how hard he was squeezing it.

“And I’m going to insist on it,” Meredith said from the doorway. “I have an injunction to keep you from harassing my client. If and when Mr. Bright feels recovered enough to talk to you, I’ll bring him to see you. In the meantime, this is a no-contact order.” She delivered the paperwork to him with a flourish.

Gibbons snatched it away just as his phone rang. He answered it, and then swore loudly. “I’ll be right there.” He jammed his phone into his pocket. “Lazar has killed again. You keep your men out of our way, Arroyo.”

“Not a problem. You’ve made it clear Lazar is your worry not ours. We’re plenty busy,” Gil said, still thinking Malcolm had been right. He was the path to finding Lazar but that was now a dead end until Malcolm recovered.

“Keep it that way,” Gibbons said before stomping off.

“That was unpleasant,” Dr. Marchetti said, pulling a syringe out of her pocket. She injected something into Malcolm’s IV. It didn’t take long for his heart beat to start slowing. “That should help calm him.”

“And that man won’t be back. If he is, call me immediately and the cops,” Meredith said.

“Thank you for coming so fast,” Jessica said as Dr. Knox took his leave.

“My pleasure. If there anything else you need, Jessica?” Meredith asked.

“No, thank you again.”

“No problem. I have clients I need to get back to.” Meredith walked to the door.

“If there are any other changes, have the nurses call me,” Dr. Marchetti said, following her out.

“I will,” Jessica said and as soon as Marchetti was out of sight she lunged for the phone on the tray, snatching it away before Gil could stop her. It hadn’t locked back off yet and she nearly dropped it, sheltering her mouth with her other hand as if she could hold in the cry physically.

“No, Jess, you don’t need to see this,” Gil said, as Ainsley flew to her mother’s side. The expression on her face told him she’d seen a glimpse of it before he could get his phone back. “You don’t need that image in your head.”

“How can you live with it in yours?” she whispered, crumbling up on the bed. She scooped Malcolm up, holding him to her, rocking. “Oh Malcolm, my poor baby.” Jessica pressed a kiss to his crown. Malcolm didn’t move, his eyes shut. Jessica settled him back, getting up so she could arrange his covers. “I think he’s asleep.”

“The doctor did just medicate him,” Ainsley said. “Let him sleep.”

She nodded as Gil used the bed remote since he was closer to it and put the head of the bed down so Malcolm could rest flat. His eyes didn’t open but out of the corner of his own vision, Gil saw Jessica say something to Dani, pressing something into her hand. Ainsley helped him pull up the bed rails just in case Malcolm did decide to try and get out of the bed in his sleep.

“Gil, come on,” Dani said. “Let’s give him some quiet time. You need lunch.” 

He was about to protest but the twin looks from Dani and Jessica silenced him. Gil nodded. “Sounds good.”

He followed Dani and JT out to the hallway. “The cafeteria is down two floors.”

Dani raised her hand flashing a wad of cash. “Mrs. Whitly has something better for you in mind judging by this.”

“Where exactly does she think we’re taking him to lunch?” JT asked, eying the wad.

“Who gives out a few hundred dollars like pocket change?” Dani countered.

“Trust me, to her it is,” Gil replied. “There’s a decent Chinese place down the block and an Irish pub in the opposite direction. It’s supposed to have good sandwiches, and I could use the beer.”

“After that, we all could,” JT said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a weird place to end this chapter. It was this or have a 10K chapter that never ended.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some detailed medical descriptions in this chapter.

Chapter Nine

They walked the block to the Irish pub in silence and real conversation didn’t start back up until they had beers in front of them and lunch ordered. A wall of Irish music surrounded them, helping to insure their conversation wouldn’t carry far.

“Tell us, Gil, just what _is_ Bright to you? It’s obvious you’re more than just his friend. I can draw conclusions but I’d rather hear it from you.” JT quaffed a good portion of his beer in one swallow.

Gil drank his more moderately, mulling over his response. “I never intended for it to go this way but I have no complaints. I knew the detectives back when his father was arrested rode over him hard, scared him and then it settled into his eleven-year-old brain that he was the reason that his father would never see the light of day again. Malcolm was crushed by the guilt and fear and was unable to speak for months. I had come the house by a few times just to check on him because it _was_ a terrifying thing he’d done, betraying his father to save others, to save _me_ from certain death and I felt miserable for the kid.”

“That had to be sad,” Dani said.

Gil nodded, taking another tentative drink. “It was and Jessica thought Malcolm was less agitated when I came by. She felt he thought he was safer with me because he was afraid of shadows at that point, probably imagining his father getting out because certainly Whitly tried to weasel out of punishment and that was on the news. Other kids were horrible to him, beating him up, picking on him for what his dad had done so he lost all his friends. So, when Jessica asked if I could come more often, I said yes.”

“And it became a thing,” JT said with a slow nod.

“A huge thing.”

“He said you used to take him out on stake outs,” Dani said, smiling softly, “trying to teach him patience.”

“Really?” JT eyed her. “He’s not stake out material. I was ready to knock his ass out when you saddled me with him that one time.”

Gil nearly choked on his beer. “Patience was never his long suit, and trust me, I gave considerable thought to putting his mother’s valium in his coco. If you think he’s bad now, he was like a squirrel on meth when he was a kid. But eventually he started talking to me and Dr. Le Deux thought it was a good relationship. Next thing I knew Jackie and I were taking him everywhere. Ainsley not so much. She was younger, didn’t realize as much what was happening and wasn’t as upset nor did she have the guilt of turning in her father but Malcolm bore all the weight of those deaths, like he was somehow to blame. He needed our help.”

“That explains his whole while high admiration of how good a man you are.” Dani grinned.

“I’m still sorry I missed that.” JT moped into his beer.

Gil rolled his eyes. “Malcolm responded well once we got him out of his shell.”

“So, you’re his _dad_, which explains _so_ much,” JT said. “You put up with nonsense from him that you wouldn’t from anyone else.”

Gil wasn’t sure if there was a reprimand in that or just bland acceptance but maybe he had been too lenient with Bright. “I suppose Jackie and I were a second set of parents, but that isn’t why I give him the leeway that I do. Malcolm is fragile, JT. He always has been. He’s used to being rejected. He’s used to everyone thinking he’s a serial killer waiting to happen. He’s absolutely haunted by the things his father had done and while he’s usually quiet about it, he’s actually quite hurt by the fact no one wants to be his friend or trust him in any way. You have no idea how he clings to the fact that you even talk to him or that Dani and Edrisa seem to like him at least a little.” Gil held up his hand stopping whatever Dani was about to say. He might have been overstating things a bit as far as she went and understated it for Edrisa. He’d have to be blind to miss how taken Edrisa was with Malcolm. “Don’t worry, he’s gotten his ass handed to him by me more than once, most recently after racing down a tunnel after a serial killer alone and when he’s well again, he’s getting another ass chewing for lying to me about talking to Lazar.”

“You don’t think Gibbons was lying about that?” Dani wrinkled her nose. 

Gil wished he could lie about that but he couldn’t do that to his team. “No, Gibbons showed me the video the other day after we debriefed him on what Lostetter had done to Malcolm that Gibbons obviously paid no attention to. Malcolm _lied_ to me because he knew I’d get it out of him whatever was said, and he doesn’t want that.”

Dani’s expression darkened and JT made an unhappy huff. Dani pushed her beer aside, meeting Gil’s gaze head on. “Why? I don’t believe Gibbons’s theory about him working with Lazar but why lie?” 

Gil shook his head as their sandwiches came. Once the waitress was gone, he answered, “He’s always been afraid people are right about him being like his father. I don’t know how he doesn’t see that he has empathy but I think Whitly and Lazar did something to him on that camping trip. Something he doesn’t want me to know.”

“Like making him watch them kill?” JT dug into his bangers and mash.

“Making him help them would be my guess,” he replied and JT set aside his fork with a scowl. Gil sighed. “He’d never want me to know that and his memory of that time is gone. He has no idea what they did to him or made him do on that camping trip We’ve convicted child killers in the past, and I couldn’t say if anyone would believe he was coerced or outrightly forced into participating, especially not if Lazar and Whitly say otherwise. It’s a stone I’d wish he’d leave unturned.”

“And if we catch Lazar…” Dani trailed off.

“I’m hoping he goes down in a gun battle with the FBI to be honest.” Gil scowled at his Reuben sandwich, loathing saying that. “I’d hate that other victims might never be found in that case but I would detest for Malcolm to be blamed for something those men forced on him. Whitly has kept his silence for twenty years. I doubt he’d stop now but Lazar is a wild card.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Dani said, picking at her chips. “And this subject is too depressing to eat over so I’m changing it. How was Mrs. Whitly with the idea of Jackie being mom number two? I can’t see that working.”

He smiled faintly. “It did for a while but then yes, there was jealousy. Jessica isn’t good a traditional boundaries and her style of mothering can be a bit…overbearing. She means well but it doesn’t always come across that good. She and Malcolm used to butt heads, and she did stop talking to me for years until Malcolm came back home.” Gil frowned remembering getting nothing but a generous donation in Jackie’s name from Jessica when she passed and never a visit or phone call. It had hurt. “But she never interfered with him visiting with us. He went on some family vacations with us, and there’re a few of his relatives who don’t like Malcolm, thinking pretty much like Lostetter did, like father like son so when Jessica would make a rare visit with them, Malcolm lived with me and Jackie. He enjoyed it. He loved Jackie’s cats. In turn we stayed with him some times in Boston when he was at Harvard.”

“Oh geez, he really went to Harvard?” JT groaned. “Guess he’s rich enough.”

“And smart enough. Don’t let him distract you with weirdness and non-stop chatter.” Gil hesitated there, wishing he’d hear some of that non-stop chatter right about now. “Malcolm is exceedingly bright, which might be how he decided on that surname. It’s either that or a bright to his father’s dark, I’ve never asked. Anyhow, Malcolm has always been wise beyond his years in some respects and painfully naïve in others.”

“He’s a wise ass too.”

“Oh yes and a button pusher. He likes to see what will make people hop.”

“And he wonders why he doesn’t have friends,” JT muttered and Dani slapped his arm.

“He inherited that trait from both parents as far as I can tell. But I do appreciate you both for coming and spending time with him. I know it’s not easy to look at him like that.”

“I’m just glad we were there when Gibbons showed up,” Dani said.

“And he’s your family, Gil. Of course, we’ll be there,” JT added.

“Well, it’s appreciated just the same.” Gil wished he could tell them just how much.

They finished lunch and the two sandwiches Gil had ordered to go for the Whitly women arrived. They carried them back to the hospital room, which was hushed with the TV on with almost no sound. Malcolm slept hard, looking particularly tiny on the bed. Ainsley met them at the door and took the food boxes.

“Thanks, Gil. What did you bring us?”

“One’s avocado turkey and the other a ham club. I figured you could mix and match if you want. The pub turned out some pretty good food,” Gil said. “And thanks for buying us lunch, Jess.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

“Hey guys,” JT said, his voice climbing with stress. He nodded behind the women.

Malcolm sat up in the bed, his arms flailing wildly. In danger of pulling his IV by accident, he also had one leg over the edge of the bed. _Damn, we forgot to put up the bed rails_ Gil thought as he caught Malcolm before he could put his wounded foot down or try to run. That would have been disastrous since the catheter was attached to a bag tied onto the bed, and Gil couldn’t even imagine the injury yanking on that would cause.

“Malcolm, come on kid, wake up! You’re safe. We’re all right here. Just wake up,” Gil said, loud enough to reach the dead. 

Jessica corralled Malcolm on the other side of the bed, sitting with him, pulling him and Gil toward her. Gil caught them both in his arms. “Malcolm, baby, wake up,” she pleaded.

Malcolm let out a piercing keen that nearly deafened them. He wrapped himself around Jessica nearly bowling her off the bed. Gil held them both firmly.

“I’m right here, Malcolm, you just hang on,” Jessica said, clutching him tight. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

He struggled hard against her and Gil couldn’t quite hold them both well with Malcolm fighting and risking his IV. JT moved up behind Malcolm and Jessica but didn’t grab on yet. Gil tugged Malcolm free of Jessica. “I’m here too, Malcolm. We all are. You’re finally safe. I promise you.”

Malcolm buried his face in the crook of Gil’s neck, burrowing in so hard Gil swore he’d slip beneath his skin. The keening went on unabated as Gil rocked him. Jessica sandwiched Malcolm between them, her slender fingers clinging to Gil’s shoulders. 

“I’ve never heard anything so horrible,” Ainsley said, covering her mouth with trembling hands.

“I have in the war,” JT said. “It’s the sound of a soul being wounded.”

Gil agreed as he watched Dani slip from the room, maybe going for the nurse’s station as if they couldn’t hear him screaming. Malcolm’s cries slowed and lowered in volume as he dragged in shallow, desperate breaths. Gil tried to put him down on the mattress but Malcolm scrabbled, trying to hold on.

“Don’t…don’t put me back in there,” Malcolm pleaded.

“Malcolm, it’s just me and Gil,” Jessica said, slipping off the bed so she could stand in his line of sight. “No one is putting you anywhere. You’re in the hospital.”

“And you’re talking to us again,” Gil said, stroking Malcolm’s back and Malcolm snuggled in tighter. “You can hang on to me as long as you need to, kid.”

“G-G-Gil,” he stammered, squeezing hard and moaned, probably pulling at the stitches and making the cracked ribs ache. “Mommy?”

Jessica rested her forehead on Malcolm’s shoulder. “You haven’t called me that since you were a tiny boy, baby. Let’s rest back, Malcolm. You’re working your IV out and your friend has brought some nurses with her.” 

Malcolm let Gil go, and they settled him back on the bed but he shook so hard Gil thought he’d vibrate himself right off the mattress. He hated having to take a step back to let the nurse in. She checked the IV, and Malcolm let out another low moan.

“Are you in pain, Malcolm?” she asked, and Malcolm answered with a slow nod. “Okay, well the doctor will be here in a moment. I’m going to check your chart and see if you have anything written for pain.” 

As the nurse sidled out, Gil pressed closer to the bed. Malcolm looked up at him, fear so bright in his eyes it hurt to see it. “She’s in custody, kid. Your mom’s right. You’re safe now.”

Malcolm shut his eyes and covered them with a shaking hand. “Hospital…how long?”

“Three days,” Ainsley replied. 

Malcolm stuttered out the word three and Gil froze, thinking he had sunk right back into the catatonia, back to parroting them. Malcolm trembled so hard the bed creaked. He struggled to sit up, balancing on one arm and held out the other to Gil who sat back on the edge of the bed. He hauled Malcolm to him. Warm tears soaked into his neck almost immediately. He cradled Malcolm, letting him cry himself out.

“I don’t even know where to hold you that probably isn’t making you hurt more,” Gil whispered as Malcolm’s sobs wound down.

“It’s okay,” Malcolm muttered but when Gil went to lay him back. “No! Hurts to lay flat.”

Ainsley grabbed the bed remote and put the head up. Once she had it to the seated position, Gil rested Malcolm against it. “Better?” she asked.

He nodded, scrubbing a hand over his face. Jessica dried his cheeks with a tissue, and then handed him a few others to blow his nose in. She took them from him without a word and threw it all in the trash. Malcolm took a few ragged breaths, and then glanced off to the side, his eyes widening as if he were noticing JT and Dani for the first time.

“Sorry,” Malcolm mumbled, dropping his gaze.

“Who you apologizing to, bro? Not us surely,” JT replied. “You earned that little moment the hard way. Ain’t no one blaming you for it.”

“What JT said,” Dani added. “Is there anything we can do?”

He shook his head but his color faded fast. “Gonna be sick.”

Jessica grabbed the ubiquitous plastic basin off the bed tray and held it in front of him. Malcolm took it in his own hands, retching a few times but nothing came up. In a moment, he put it down on the tray.

“Thirsty.”

“Here. The nurses are monitoring how much goes in you.” Ainsley gave him a plastic mug marked out in milliliters. She positioned the straw for him, and he made another retching sound pushing back against the mattress hard as he shielded his face with a hand.

“She made me drink through a straw.”

Gil sighed. Just like that a new neurosis was born. Ainsley ripped the lid off the mug and the embedded straw went with it. She helped Malcolm steady the mug so he could drink. He gulped greedily at the water. 

“That was the first bad dream you’ve had in three days,” Jessica said. “Are you okay?”

“It wasn’t….” Malcolm trailed off, and then shrugged, wincing as he did. Gil didn’t doubt his shoulders ached. They’d seen on video how he’d been suspended by them on the recordings and the doctor reported injuries to the joints. “Not bad by my standards. Someone was yelling at me that I knew something he needed.”

“Not a dream,” Dani said. “That was your buddy from the FBI.”

“Don’t worry. He’s not going to be back any time soon,” Gil added, as Malcolm made a face. “Your mother saw to that.”

“Thanks….then I was back in the box. I was in one, wasn’t I? Not all in my head.”

“I wish I could tell you no, kid, but that wasn’t your dreams either.”

Malcolm squeezed his eyes shut, his hand shaking violently. He clenched his fist to stop it. “And you were all in the dream too, dressed like knights. For some reason Dani had her hair dyed purple.”

“That tells us more about your own desires than is probably good.” JT snorted, and Dani slugged his shoulder.

Malcolm peered up at JT. “And you promised to tell me your name, JT.”

“Now _that_ was your dream.”

Malcolm slotted his eyes. “I heard what I heard.”

“In a _dream_.”

“Jerry?” Malcolm said, and Gil face palmed as JT thinned his lips. “Jordan? Joss?”

_Leave it to Malcolm to grasp at calming himself by annoying JT. Well, I knew they’d never actually get along_, Gil thought, keeping out of it entirely.

“It’s going to suck to have survived so much only to die in that bed strangled by IV tubing.” JT grinned, and Dani shoved him again.

Malcolm laughed, a thin brittle sound but true. “I need up.”

“Oh, hell no you don’t,” Gil said. “Your butt is staying right where it is, though if you’re going to be dreaming again and thrashing around, they might want to rethink part of their treatment plan.”

“I can get this out.” Malcolm ticked a finger against the heplock in his arm. 

Gil shook his head and nodded toward the foot of the bed. Malcolm lifted the sheets and widened his eyes.

“Oh!”

“Yeah and I’m pretty there’s a balloon on the other end of that thing keeping it in place so you stay still.”

Malcolm wrinkled his nose. “When that’s gone, can I have real PJs? Why do these gowns feel more naked than actual naked?”

“Because they’re ridiculous,” Jessica said, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. “I’ll bring you some clothes but even when that’s gone you need to stay in bed.”

“Mother,” Malcolm whined. 

Someone knocked on the door interrupting her reply. They all looked over to see Dr. Marchetti again along with Dr. Rhodes and the nurse again. The nurse came over and put something into Malcolm’s IV.

“Painkiller, don’t worry it’s not a narcotic.” She smiled at him.

“Can that thing come out?” He pointed downward.

“Let your doctors check you out and if they say yes, we’ll take care of you,” she promised and gestured to the white board on the wall where doctors, nurses and aides’ names were written. “I’m Lauren. You need me, just buzz.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Lauren, he could use more water,” Jessica said. “Do you need to write down how much he drank?”

She nodded, taking the mug. “I’m on it.”

Malcolm looked to the two doctors who eyed everyone in the room as if they wanted the room empty. “They can stay he said after a moment. “I don’t care what they hear.”

“It’s very nice to hear you talking, Malcolm. I’m Dr. Maddelena Marchetti, a friend of Dr. Le Deux. She’s signed over your care to me for the time being. I’ve been slowly reintroducing your meds, and I’ll be around to talk to you one on one. Gabrielle thought my specialty would be very helpful to you.”

Malcolm frowned. Gil knew he’d always been resistant to finding different therapists. He could be such a stubborn brat some days. “Trauma?” he said finally.

She nodded. “We don’t have to talk right now if you don’t want but I’d like to stop by tomorrow morning for certain. Is that okay or would you like to talk now?”

“Tomorrow is good,” he said warily.

“Splendid.” She said, digging into her lab coat pocket. “If you change your mind, have Lauren call me. And here, a little bird said you might like this. Welcome back, Malcolm.” Marchetti handed over a Jolly Rancher with a flourish. “Watermelon, my personal favorite.”

He brightened, taking it. Malcolm unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth. “Thank you.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow then and let Dr. Rhodes chat with you.”

He nodded as Marchetti left. Dr. Rhodes gently displaced Jessica from the side of the bed and peeled up the covers toward Malcolm’s knees.

“You don’t want them to leave the room?” Rhodes asked as Lauren returned with a basket of bandage change materials and Malcolm’s water. She put the latter on the tray.

“It’s fine if they’re okay with seeing it. How bad is it?” Malcolm tried to look over the wadded bedding.

“You’ll recover with some work. It was a grade three sprain of the three major lateral ankle ligaments, the anterior and posterior talofibular ligaments were ruptured and the calcaneofibular ligament broke, pulling an avulsion fracture of the lateral malleolus along with it. Whatever hit you did so with such force it translated straight through the ankle leaving with you a grade one sprain of the deltoid ligaments on the other side as well. The ankle was completely destabilized. I had to surgically repair the torn ligaments,” Rhodes said, undoing the relentless Velcro strapping of the knee-high, hard, rocker-bottomed boot. He took it off gingerly as Lauren suspended Malcolm’s leg for him. He held the boot up. “This will be your best friend. You can’t be weight bearing yet so we’ll get you a walker once the catheter is pulled. However, you’d be better off using the bedside urinal and bed pan today.”

Malcolm made a face, his gaze canting down to the plastic urinal hanging off the bed rail. “Ew.”

“Still?” Gil asked. Malcolm’s sour expression deepened. “You never liked that on stake-outs.”

“Do I want to know?” Ainsley said at the same time JT said, “Told you he wasn’t stake out material.” 

Dani rolled her eyes. “The guys pee in soda bottles so they don’t have to leave the car.”

“Ew.” Ainsley wrinkled her nose.

“Of course, they do. Men think that little hose means the world can be their toilets.” Jessica eyed Gil like he was somehow fully responsible for this.

“Mother!” Malcolm groaned.

“And Malcolm never did like to get dirty.” She brushed his hair back again. “I can’t understand how he went from being that little boy to this morbid job of his.”

“Mother.” The title came out much more of a whine that time. “The doctor is here. Can we table this until later?”

“He’s the one who brought up you doing your business in that plastic cup.” Jessica arched her eyebrows at him.

Malcolm sighed.

“Don’t worry. My mother always said the same about me and my brothers and the world toilet theory.” Dr. Rhodes laughed, running a gloved finger over Malcolm’s foot, pressing gently into the swelling and releasing quickly. “Ah, that is looking nicer now.”

Malcolm peered down at his ankle, going the color of the sheets. Gil wasn’t sure what the hell the doctor was looking at. The ankle was still grotesquely swollen but the big black blisters were flattened into shiny areas of thin, dead skin. Malcolm’s hand started shaking.

“The edema is resolving a little and your stitches are excellent. I was a little worried the swelling was so bad that when we closed the skin it would be too tight, which would compromise the repair. It could dehisce, which means it would open up and become a real nightmare,” Rhodes said. “I want some more ice on this though, Lauren.”

“I think they got too busy and missed a session. I’ll get it as soon as we bandage this back up,” she said.

“Malcolm, what we’re going to put on a device on you which does compression and ice at the same time. It’ll be a little uncomfortable but in the long run if we get the swelling down, you’ll have less pain and fewer complications,” Rhodes said.

Gil watched Malcolm’s color race even further away as he managed to ask, “Complications?”

“If it stays too swollen, the incision will dehisce like I said. There’s not a lot of tissue between your skin and the bone in that area. Infection could set in. Worse case is the bone gets infected,” Rhodes said, patting Malcolm’s knee. “But don’t worry. It looks fine. We have you on antibiotics as is but you need to keep this foot up and you won’t be going anywhere without it in the boot. Okay?”

Malcolm nodded and Gil hoped to hell he meant it. Malcolm took risks and was ridiculously stubborn but the veiled threat of losing his leg seemed to have sunk in. Lauren and Rhodes rebandaged the wound and she left Rhodes to finish it off. She came back with another nightmare of neoprene, padding and cold packs that she encased his ankle in.

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes to take that off and get your boot back on,” Lauren promised.

“And if your friends would like to step out, Lauren can also pull that catheter and I’ll see you tomorrow, Malcolm,” Rhodes said.

“Thank you,” he replied listlessly as JT was the first one out the door.

The rest of them decamped, and Lauren went to fetch an aide to help her. Jessica didn’t want to leave the door way. Gil took her hand and led her down the hall.

“He’ll be fine now, Jess,” he said.

She shook her head, looking over her shoulder. “He’s terrified, Gil.”

“I noticed. We’re not going far but no one needs to see what happens next.”

Jessica made a soft noise between a laugh and a sob. “Definitely not but I’m not going home tonight either, Gil. He needs me here.”

He hugged her gently. “I was thinking the same thing. He needs a little time to feel safe.”

“He’s not going to, Gil. He’s never going to feel safe again.” She trembled and he let her go, so he could look her in the eye.

“He _will_ but not right away. It’ll take time and he’ll have to find _his_ way there, Jessica, not your way or mine. All we can do is guide him.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“I know it’s not.” He also knew it wasn’t going to be as complicated as Jessica was likely to make it. He just needed to be sure that he and Ainsley kept her a little reined in.

Lauren came back out with the aide. She beckoned to Gil and Jessica. “You all can go back in. He’s looking a little rough but I know there are orders not to sedate him. If he gets too anxious, Dr. Marchetti might reverse that for his own health.”

“We’ll calm him down,” Gil promised, and turned to JT and Dani. “Do you two want to come back in or are you going to go?”

“We should at least say goodbye,” Dani said. 

“She’s right about that but…and I really do hate to say this but we have to question him,” JT said.

“Oh, Gil, no,” Jessica said. 

“It has to be done, Jess but it can wait until morning,” Gil said, wishing it could wait until forever. It couldn’t and he damned well wasn’t going to let anyone else do it. If the brass found out Malcolm was awake, they’d demand he be questioned, and if Gil didn’t do it, they’d send someone. The best he could do was to give Malcolm the night.

Jessica made a disgusted noise and stomped back in. The rest of them followed in a rush. Malcolm had his hands over his face, his whole body shaking. “Malcolm,” Jessica said softly.

He dropped his hands to the tray, anger flashing across his face. He scrabbled for a tissue and mopped his watering eyes. “Damn it. I can’t stop…”

“Given what you’ve been through, who’d blame you?” Ainsley asked.

Malcolm gritted his teeth. “Me.”

“Maybe you should get some rest, Malcolm. Your body needs it,” Gil said, thinking his mind needed it more. “JT and Dani are going to head out. I’ll be staying.”

He shook his head, scrubbing away his tears. “No, you need to know what happened.”

“It can wait.”

“No, I want it out of my head, and I don’t ever want to think of it again,” Malcolm said, his voice cracking. He knew as well as any of them that it wouldn’t be the one and only time he had to tell this story and that it had been tattooed on his brain. It would be impossible for him to never think of it again.

Gil planned to let him believe that lie for just a little while longer. “I was going to wait until morning.”

“I’d rather it be now.”

“Okay.”

“Malcolm, you shouldn’t-” Jessica said but he held out his hand to her.

“I need to mother. Please.”

“Ainsley, take your mom home for a while. This is going to take some time. Jess, get some real rest,” Gil said.

“I can’t.”

“I’ll take her out shopping,” Ainsley said, grabbing her mother’s wrist. “He’s not going to want to have you hear all the horrible details, Mother. We need to go.”

“Oh, that’s true. All right. We’ll be back, Malcolm. We’ll bring pajamas, and if talking to them is too much, then you stop. Promise.”

Malcolm nodded, and she took that as a promise, letting Ainsley lead her out. Gil took the chair closest to the bed and Dani took the other side. JT pulled out his phone and started recording. Gil went through the preliminary stuff of saying who was in the room and recording before saying, “Walk us through it, Bright. How did she get in?”

Malcolm stared at his hands and Gil wondered if he’d lie. Malcolm was certainly capable of it when it suited him. “Eve showed up at my place. Mother had told her about the new case and she thought I might want some company because dead kids are always a sad thing. I invited her up.”

“To talk?” Dani asked.

“I planned to send her on her way, really. That lasted about ninety seconds.” Color raced up his cheeks.

“Oh.” Dani said, and Gil pinched the bridge of his nose. This was going to be worse than he imagined. “How long have you known Eve?”

“Um…a few days and about fifteen minutes of total conversation if that’s what you mean.” Malcolm sighed. “And yes, the sentiment of ‘let this be a lesson to you about the perils of risky sex’ seems a bit pointless at this juncture.” 

“No one is judging you for that,” Gil said, trying to put him at ease without messing up the interrogation.

Malcolm made a derisive noise. “I am.”

“You have tendency to take risks. Usually they work for you,” Dani said.

He shot her a grateful look.

“And you can skip all the details of the...encounter,” JT put in. “We already knew you went to bed with her.”

Malcolm curled in a little on himself, realizing that the scents and other evidence of sex had not only lingered at the crime scene but all those closest to him had experienced it firsthand. 

“You told me once you don’t sleep with people,” Dani said when he seemed disinclined to continue the story, and he diminished further right before Gil’s eyes. “Did you make an exception?”

Malcolm shook his head. “She must have played with the lock and I hadn’t noticed.”

“We found tape residue on the mechanism,” Gil said.

“Okay that’s how then. I woke up and she was in the loft again. I had on my restraints. She was on me before I could get out. She hit me.” He jerked a hand toward his groin. “Then drugged me but not before asking me if I remembered Julissa Lostetter and of course, I did.”

Gil wished he could have spared him the rest of it but he doubted he could have stopped Malcolm if he tried. With shocking, horrible clarity, Malcolm detailed everything he could remember between the druggings, beatings and other torture. He told them about trying to walk on his devastated ankle, falling and knocking himself out because it couldn’t hold him, and later crawling for what had to have felt like miles, naked through the woods trying to find safety. Gil shuddered hard after an interlude of Malcolm weeping uncontrollably, which he followed up by telling them about being put in the deer sled and being hauled back that thankfully he didn’t remember much of. By the second time being put in the trunk, he remembered nothing that wasn’t obviously nightmares induced by the trauma and withdrawal. 

Gil never wanted to hear this interrogation tape again, wanted to destroy it along with the phone it was on. No one should ever hear it but they would. At Eve’s trial, it would all become part of the public record. Someone might write a true crime book about it and depending on who wrote it, it could come across as the son of The Surgeon getting what was due him even though Malcolm deserved nothing of the sort. By the end, Malcolm was a loose-limbed hot mess on the bed and the box of tissues was nearly exhausted.

“It’s enough now, Malcolm,” he said, waving for JT to terminate the recording. “You’ve given us everything we need. I’m going to text your mother and sister so they can come back.”

Malcolm glanced around the room. “Are they sleeping here?”

“Ainsley and I are sleeping in the chairs. Your mother had the other bed,” he replied, taking the lid back off the replenished water mug. “Drink.”

Malcolm obeyed, and then said, “Make her go home.”

“No chance in hell. We’re staying tonight. No arguments, don’t even try.”

“Listen to the man, bro.” JT said. “You’ll sleep better knowing you’re not alone here.”

“Such as I ever sleep,” Malcolm muttered.

“You’ll try or they might override the no-sedation order,” Gil said, hating to threaten him with that. “Once you’re a little more settled, we’ll go home.”

“It’ll be okay now,” Dani said, rubbing Malcolm’s shoulder. “And since none of us have mentioned it yet, Eve’s locked up in a mental hospital at the moment. She won’t be coming for you any time soon.”

“Unless she convinces them she’s crazy,” he whispered.

“It won’t…” Dani trailed off, knowing she couldn’t promise that. “She could end up like your father, at least for a while even if she does get declared insane. Insane doesn’t mean getting out of jail free.”

Gil knew that wasn’t entirely true either but he’d root for the psych hospital scenario if it came to it.

Malcolm shook his head. “It’s okay. She isn’t in her right mind. I almost can’t blame her. She wanted to kill Mother most of all, convinced she knew what Dad was doing.”

“Don’t worry on it now, Malcolm. You need to rest,” Gil said.

“Where’s Sunshine?” Malcolm asked suddenly.

“I have her,” Dani replied. “She’s fine.”

He sighed, letting his eyes close. “Thank you.”

“No problem. And Gil’s right, you sleep now.”

Malcolm opened his eyes again, rooting around in the bed. “There’re no restraints.”

“I don’t think they do those anymore,” Dani said.

“And your arms are cut up badly. They wouldn’t want anything to aggravate those sutures,” Gil replied. “I’ll put the bed rails up and you won’t be alone. Don’t worry about it. If the nightmares come, we’ll wake you up.”

“Thanks, Gil.”

“How far back do you want this mattress?” Gil asked, picking up the remote. “You said being flat was hurting your arms.”

Malcolm took the remote and reclined the bed some. “Thank you all for being here, for finding me. I owe you.”

“Nothing, you owe us nothing,” JT said sharply. “We don’t leave people behind. You listen to Gil and the doctors. Dani and I will be around if we can.” He patted the top of Malcolm’s uninjured foot through the bedding.

“See you later, Bright.” Dani leaned over and kissed Malcolm’s cheek.

Gil raised a hand to them as they walked out the door, texted Jessica and then settled back in the recliner. He took Malcolm’s hand. “Get some sleep, son.”

Malcolm squeezed his hand hard, holding on tight. Even after Malcolm’s hand slackened as he drifted off, Gil didn’t let go. At least now he knew Malcolm had turned a corner. He wasn’t all right but he could recover. It wouldn’t be fast or easy but he wasn’t going to walk that road alone.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter ten

Gil held the door open as Malcolm slowly stamped his way inside his loft, surgical his boot clomping as he went. He leaned wearily on his cane. Malcolm pulled up short seeing he had a welcoming party awaiting him. Dani, Ainsley, and Jessica sat at his kitchen island talking over coffee.

“Does no one work anymore?” Malcolm grumbled, raking a hand through his lank hair.

“And hello to you too, brother.” Ainsley rolled her eyes as their mother slithered off the stool.

“You look pale, Malcolm. You need to lie down,” Jessica fretted as she crossed the room. “Are you sure you need to be _here_ given everything that happened? I’d rather you come home.”

“I _am_ home, Mother. I need to be in my own place and I….” Malcolm trailed off, catching sight of the futon sitting crossways to his couch. “What is _that_ thing?” He pointed with the tip of his cane.

“I believe they call it a futon.” Jessica sniffed. 

“I know what it’s called. Why is it here?”

“Because no one wants to share that big bed of yours with you,” Dani said, sauntering over. “And your couch sucks for sleep overs.”

“I…I have no words. Sleep overs?” He widened his eyes at Gil obviously annoyed he hadn’t been filled in about this. Gil didn’t feel the least bit contrite about it.

“You’re not staying here alone, at least not for the first few nights, Malcolm. For one, your mother is right, you probably should have gone to her home. Secondly, you were supposed to go to a rehab hospital because you still need care but you pitched a fit,” Gil said.

“He excels at them.” Ainsley offered up another eye roll, and Malcolm huffed at her.

“And thirdly while my place might have been a better alternative, you do have a point about settling back into your own space.”

“How is it my space if everyone is _in_ it,” he grumbled, swaying on his feet.

“If you are going to be a jackass….” Ainsley retorted. 

“You’re going to accept help because you have friends here,” Jessica said, pointing to Dani. “And more coming. You’re also going to behave for the home health nurses and do what they say because I _know_ you want to go back to work and you won’t be able to if that ankle heals badly.”

Malcolm’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry. I _am_ tired, and I just want things back to normal.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen immediately,” Dani said, hopping off the stool. She put a sympathetic hand on his arm. “But this can be a fun thing, you know?”

He smiled faintly. “You’re staying too?”

“There’s also a new bed upstairs,” She pointed up the steps. “I think your mother has dibs on that. I might end up with the futon, and there’s a rumor JT will camp out in a sleeping bag on the floor.”

“That can _not_ be true.” He laughed.

“Maybe but he will be here soon, says he’s bringing something by before he has to go pick up Tally,” Dani said.

Malcolm drew himself up to his full height, his face lighting up. “Now I’m curious.”

“Be curious on the couch.” Gil stabbed a finger at the piece of furniture. “Or on the bed but either way get off that foot.”

Malcolm sighed and hobbled to the couch. Ainsley pulled the coffee table closer to it and gave him a look. His sigh was far more melodramatic this time but he put a pillow on the table and heaved his booted foot onto the cushion. Much more of this and Gil was going to be need a drink or the whole bottle. Dani joined him on the couch but Malcolm didn’t seem to register her. He studied his bedroom area, his brow furrowing. Gil hadn’t expected it to take him even this long to notice.

“Something’s wrong with my bed.”

“Looks okay to me. You’re not one of those fussy types if there’s a wrinkle in the covers you melt down, are you?” Dani nudged him.

He pinched up his features. “No but the headboard is a little different...no the whole thing is bigger.”

“It’s a new bed entirely,” Jessica said. “I wasn’t letting you come back to that bed where…well less said the better. This one has the tie downs for the restraints built into the frame so you don’t have to worry about it pulling the rings out of the wall. This time you’d have to take the whole bed with you or break it to get free.”

Malcolm blinked. “You did what?”

“You didn’t have money sewn up in the old mattress did you, brother?” Ainsley laughed.

“No but…my bed.” His confused, almost mournful look, nearly made Gil chuckle.

“Is gone. This one is better. I just rebought the same exact mattress only a size bigger because I didn’t want to hear it wasn’t the right one.” Jessica flapped a hand at him. “And I bought you three sets of king-sized sheets that are deliciously soft. You should be very comfy.”

“King? But there’s just me, Mother.”

“It’ll be harder for you to toss yourself out of bed if you start in the middle of a big king.”

“Gil,” that came out as a sad whine.

Gil fixed him with a look. “What in twenty years has made you think I have any pull with your mother once she’s set on something? Besides, parts of the other bed went to the evidence locker. It’s better this way.”

“And if you were throwing yourself out windows before, I could only imagine what would happen now after everything.” Jessica’s voice cracked just a bit and her eyes sheened with unshed tears.

Dani widened her eyes. “You threw yourself out a window?”

“No! Well, sort of. I was asleep. I broke the restraints on one side and ran out the window.” Malcolm flushed, not quite meeting Dani’s gaze.

“That window over there?” Dani added, thrusting a hand in the general direction of the obviously well-repaired window.

“It was the day we had the Professor Holton case.”

“You went from dangling several stories up to a man with no brain in his head?” Dani’s voice pitched high.

“I went to therapy first. Got us lollipops.” Malcolm tried to smile but Gil saw it falter.

“Either you’re tougher than I expected or crazier,” she replied.

“Or both,” Ainsley muttered, and Malcolm whipped his head around to glare at her.

“Maybe that’s where the shoulder separation came from,” Gil said, walking over to the couch. He rubbed the back of Malcolm’s neck. “The doctors found one. We assumed it was from Eve’s treatment of you.”

“That didn’t help. My arm has bugged me since the window incident,” he admitted.

“Dr. Rhodes plans on tacking shoulder exercises onto your therapy once he clears you to start in with that ankle,” Gil said.

“I know.” Malcolm rested back against the couch. “I’ll be so out of shape for my yoga.”

“Yoga? Really?” 

“It’s calming.”

Dani patted his knee. “So, what do you have in way of entertainment in here?”

He pointed to the TV between his two weapons collection. “I have a movie library. Pick whatever you’d like. Right now, I’ll probably fall asleep to whatever.”

Before Dani could respond, Ainsley’s phone rang. She answered it, a look of consternation washing over her face. Gil hoped Dani’s phone wouldn’t go off too. He was still on vacation technically but his team wasn’t. Thankfully hers stayed silent.

“I don’t know…hang on.” Ainsley pressed the phone into her belly to muffle it. “There’s an escaped mental hospital inmate, _not_ from Claremont, from Bellevue. They want me to cover it. I can tell them no.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Go. Seriously. I have plenty of people here for me. Go to work, Ains. It’s fine. You don’t need to sit here and watch me sleep. It’s a little weird anyhow.”

“Thanks, Malcolm.” She lifted the phone to her lips. “I’ll be right there.”

Ainsley slipped out and Malcolm turned on the TV for them. Gil cocked his head, hearing heavier footsteps ascending the stairs after Ainsley’s lighter ones had gone down. Someone knocked on the loft door and Gil answered it. JT entered carrying a plastic container.

“Can’t stay long but I come bearing gifts,” JT said. “My grandma is up from Savannah and she insisted I bring food with me.”

“Did you tell her Bright lives on air?” Dani grinned.

“I did which only made her go back and bake some more so this is probably not the only thing I’ll be bringing.” JT laughed, putting it on the counter. “In fact, Grandma Etta insisted I watch you eat a piece before I go get Tally and report back to her.”

“Your grandmother is here? Shouldn’t you be there and not here?” Malcolm eyed JT. 

“I should be a lot of things but here I am.” JT put a piece of the dessert on a napkin and handed it to Malcolm. “But you don’t disobey Etta Tarmel, trust me on this. Here, ooey gooey butter cake.”

Malcolm accepted the dessert, staring down at it. “That’s an awful big piece.”

“Bro, it’s the size of a brownie. It’s fine.” JT crossed his arms. “Eat it so I’m not late picking up Tally.”

Gil suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. These two children could argue about anything. Malcolm picked off a tiny piece of the cake but didn’t eat it.

“It’s like he thinks I’m going to poison him.” JT huffed, turning to Gil for support. Gil shrugged.

“That’s just how my son eats….or doesn’t eat as the case may be,” Jessica said.

Malcolm popped the pea sized bite into his mouth, and then widened his eyes. “This is good!”

“Damn right it is.”

“Tell your grandmother thank you for me. I appreciate her thoughtfulness.” Malcolm broke off a bigger piece this time, and then brushed off Dani’s questing fingers. “Uh-uh, this is mine!”

“I know.” Dani broke off one end and ate it.

“You have to watch out for Powell. She’ll always steal your food.” JT laughed.

“Just be careful with that around here. Mother likes to drug my stuff if she thinks I need to go to sleep.”

Jessica expertly deflected Malcolm’s stink-eye. “Lace a boy’s tea with valium once….”

“If it were only once,” he volleyed back.

“It looks like it might need to be done again now. Have you looked in a mirror, Malcolm? Your eyes have enough bags for the lot of us to go to Rome for the month,” Jessica replied.

“Let me finish this and I’ll take a nap,” Malcolm said rather than do battle.

“I have to go pick up Tally but I’ll be back later,” JT said, handing Dani a piece of the cake.

“You really don’t have to. You should visit with your grandmother,” Malcolm protested.

“It’s all good.” JT raised his hand and slipped out the door.

Gil took a piece of the cake, cut the brownie-sized thing into two and gave half to Jessica. She’d never eat the whole thing, and she needed to eat a little just as much as her son did. Malcolm showed Dani how to work the remote as he polished off most of the dessert.

“You can watch the TV. It won’t bother me,” he said, and Gil knew that was a lie. He’d be sure to keep it turned down low. 

Malcolm was good to his word. He washed his sticky fingers after eating almost all the cake piece and then slowly made his way to the new bed. He pulled down the covers and set the cane on the floor next to the bed before strapping one arm in.

“Are you going to be okay like that?” Dani asked.

“It’s not really touching most of the stitches. They’re up higher. It’ll be okay,” he said, even though it was obvious that some of them were under the restraints.

“You got it?” she persisted.

“I’m fine.” He finished strapping in and shoved his mouthguard into place.

For someone who had protested he wasn’t tired, Gil noticed Malcolm was asleep in minutes. It didn’t get past Jessica’s notice either. “So much for I’m not tired,” she said.

“I noticed. It’s not going to last long,” Gil replied, going with the odds on with his prediction.

“I wish there was something more we could do for him,” Dani said.

“You have already done more than most, Dani,” Jessica said. “My son has very few friends and even less of them that would spend so much free time with him trying to help him through all his trauma.”

“And he has to go through it on his own,” Gil added. “All we can do is be there for him to lean on and pick him up when he falls because he will. He’ll lie about it so keep an eye out for that.”

“Gil…” Dani started to protested he suspected as he watched her expression crumble.

“He does. He tried to hide how fragile his mental state is. Some days he’s good at faking it.”

“And sometimes he isn’t. I’ve seen the cracks even before this.” Dani twisted on the couch so she could watch the slow rise and fall of Malcolm’s chest. “He’s gone through something no one ever should. Is he going to be right?”

“Malcolm hasn’t been right since he learned what his father was,” Jessica replied softly. “This is going to hard, the hardest thing he’s had to do since being a little boy trying to find his way through the nightmare Martin left him in.” 

Neither Gil nor Dani had a response for that. The women started talking about some charity Dani was fond of and Gil left them to it. He slipped out of the loft to make a quick run to his place for something. He was shocked to arrive back with them only to find Malcolm still asleep, looking actually peaceful for a change. Jessica raised her eyebrows when she spotted the carriers.

“You brought the furry beasts?”

“He likes them and since Sunshine is still at Dani’s…” Gil shrugged and opened the carriers. His two cats spilled out and started investigating the loft. Tommy was a chunky blue-grey Scottish fold and Tuppence a lean, talkative Burmese.

“I didn’t know you had cats, Gil,” Dani said.

He nodded. “They were Jackie’s. She loved them.” He sighed, sucking in his lower lip. The hurt of losing her had barely ebbed an iota in the three years that had passed since he lost her. “Honestly I thought he could use something to cuddle up with if Dani doesn’t mind keeping the bird a while longer.”

She waved him off. “Sunshine’s no trouble.”

“Thanks. I have to go get the temporary litter box.”

Gil set it up in the far corner and Malcolm still didn’t wake up. Even the cats getting on the bed with him didn’t make him stir. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear Jessica had slipped him some of her valiums. Edrisa came soon after with a crock pot and a large heavy bag for the part of the evening that he hadn’t told Malcolm about yet. JT arrived about twenty minutes later with Tally and his Grandma Etta and came bearing more food. Later he’d make something of his own. It would be more food than he knew Malcolm would ever eat but he hoped what would come from this was the idea of how much he was cared for.

They were all watching a movie and discussing which of the games Edrisa had brought would be played first when a muffled scream echoed in the loft and the sound of something heavy hitting the hard wood floor. Gil and Dani both were on their feet in an instant only to see Malcolm half on the floor, one of his arms – naturally the one that was already injured – extended behind him captured in the restraint. Luckily his bad foot was on that side too and still currently on the mattress but who knew how much of his weight was on it.

“Oh Malcolm!” Jessica cried as Gil and JT took off for the bed.

Malcolm spit his mouth guard out only seconds before he vomited on the floor. He made a sharp, sobbing sound before throwing up again. God only knew what he’d seen in that dream but it left him shaking hard. Gil navigated the mess on the floor, trying to help Malcolm as he thrashed, maybe still mostly asleep. JT went around the other side and freed his restrained arm before assisting Gil in lifting Malcolm back onto the bed in a seated position.

Gil sat next to him, unfastening the cuff on that arm. “It’s all right, kid. It was just a dream.”

Malcolm shook his head, pressing a hand to his mouth. “Bathroom.”

Gil stood him up, not bothering with the cane. He slipped an arm around Malcolm and supported him, half carrying him, to the bathroom and eased him to his knees in front of the toilet. He found a wash cloth and ran hot water on it as Malcolm finished turning himself inside out. When Malcolm finally rested back against the tub, he handed him the warmed, wet towel and Malcolm covered his mouth and nose with it, tears trickling down his cheeks. 

Without a word, Gil gave him a box of tissues as well that Malcolm took with a shaking hand. “I was in the box,” he said as last.

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I wish I could promise you that would be the last time you ever see the inside of that damn trunk but I can’t.” Gil entertained a spare thought of jamming Eve into the trunk for a few days to let her sample the horror of it.

“I know.” Malcolm blew his nose. 

“Have you given thought to continuing with Dr. Marchetti at least for a while?” Gil knew it was unlikely. Malcolm was attached to Dr. Le Deux. On the other hand, he had seen a different therapist when he lived away working with the FBI.

“Maybe. She doesn’t know me.”

“I know but it might be good to get the insight from someone who deals specially with trauma.” _And adults_ but he didn’t voice that last concern.

Malcolm nodded. “I made a mess out there.”

“I don’t think anyone cares. Can you get up? You’re not doing the ankle much good sitting like that.” Gil held out a hand.

He helped Malcolm up and left him to brush his teeth. JT was right outside the bathroom with the cane. Once Malcolm was done, Gil handed off the cane and let him make his own slow way into the rest of the apartment. Edrisa and Jessica were scrubbing up the floor while Dani and Tally worked in the kitchen on tea if he didn’t miss his guess, seeing the kettle steaming.

Malcolm paused, realizing there were far more people in his place than there had been when he went to sleep. His hand shook, his face going red. “I…I’m so sorry,” he said softly.

“You still apologizing for involuntary reactions?” JT asked, pointing to the couch. “Go sit and relax, dude.”

“Edrisa, you don’t have to do that,” Malcolm said, ignoring JT entirely.

She waved him off. “You know what I do for a living. This is nowhere near as bad as that. I’m happy to help your mother, Mr. Bright.”

“All things considered, Edrisa, you can call me Malcolm,” he said, also ignoring Gil’s gentle push toward the couch. Gil pressed his shoulder a little harder to get him to move.

“Really? Thank you, Malcolm,” Edrisa gushed.

JT snorted. “You’d think he said you won the lottery.”

“Did you know, detective, that I was born in Hawaii to obviously Japanese parents,” she replied.

“And somehow you ended up here far east and north of paradise,” JT replied.

“Even so. I was raised with a lot of Japanese culture and things are a bit more…formal there. Jessica and I were discussing it before you got here. Sounds like the Miltons had some things in common with that. Anyhow, being invited to use someone’s first name is a sign of trust and friendship. It has a level of intimacy that we don’t see attached to names here in America…not that I’m suggesting you meant anything intimate by it, Malcolm,” Edrisa said in a rush, carrying the cleaning rags to toss them into the trash can.

He managed a smile. “We’re friends, Edrisa, or I’d like to think so. I’m rusty at it.”

“I’d like to think so too.” She beamed and headed into the bathroom to wash her hands.

“Here, we made you this. Actually, we made two but Edrisa suggested this might be better on your stomach.” Dani hefted a mug.

“Thank you.” He turned to Etta and said, “You have to be Mrs. Tarmel.”

“I absolutely must,” she beamed. “You sit down young man. You’re not well.”

“Sorry, it’s not that I’m sick…” Malcolm trailed off, staring at the floor.

“Just because some of what ails you is mental doesn’t mean you aren’t as sick as if you had the flu or diabetes,” she countered.

“Some people would disagree with you,” Malcolm said, accepting another prod from Gil and started walking but he crossed over to Etta instead of going to the couch.

“Son, when you live as long as I have you learn some people are just plain stupid.”

Malcolm smiled at her and held out his hand full of healing cuts from crawling in the woods. “I think I’m going to like you a lot, Mrs. Tarmel.”

She shook his hand. “You call me, Etta, young man.”

“Malcolm, but I’m betting your grandson has other names for me.” Malcolm’s smile grew as JT snorted. 

“I might have warned her you’re a pain in the ass. Now are you going to get off that foot or not?” JT asked.

“I’m going.” Malcolm hobbled to the couch and sat down. “And nice to see you again, too, Tally. Wish it were better times.”

“Just happy to be here to help,” she replied.

Dani sat next to him as Edrisa reappeared. “Here, it’s some kind of green tea.”

“Gyokuro,” Edrisa said, digging in her pocket. She pulled out a little baggie filled with golden sugar-crusted discs, “though peppermint might be better in this case. However, you might find this helpful in settling your stomach.”

Malcolm extracted a disc and sniffed it. “Ginger?”

She sat on the other side of him from Dani. “Yes. It’s been proven as an anti-nausea agent, though it is a bit spicy in that form.”

He chewed it quickly making a bit of a face. “That is a bit hot, tasty though. Thank you.”

“Have as much as you want.”

“Thanks.” Malcolm reached for his tea that Dani had set on the coffee table. He didn’t quite make it before suddenly he broke down into tears. He tried to cover his mouth but his hands shook so hard he couldn’t manage it. Gil moved toward the couch with Jessica in his wake but stopped when Edrisa turned on the couch, putting a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder.

“May I touch you?” she asked.

He made a hiccupping sound, trying to stop his sobbing but he nodded. Edrisa took one of his hands, rubbing the back of it.

“Remember the cuddle party I mentioned,” she said and Dani raised her eyebrows at her.

“Edrisa,” Gil hissed. This wasn’t time for any of her awkward stories.

She whipped a hand up at him. “The point of a cuddle party isn’t weird or sexual. We’re a touch-deprived society but gentle touch triggers the pressure receptors in our bodies.” She stroked his cheek and to Gil’s surprise, Malcolm leaned into the touch. “It’s been proved to reduce anxiety and depression. Touch triggers the release of oxytocin.” Edrisa pulled him closer and Malcolm settled his cheek on her shoulder and Edrisa rubbed his arm. “I think you know what that does.”

“Is that the thing you said was about pleasure and desire?” Dani asked, taking his other hand.

“No, that’s dopamine though oxytocin and endorphins have similar effects,” Edrisa said. “Oxytocin has a major role in starting labor and milk release but it also bonds us, mother to child, lovers to each other after orgasm. It calms us all from a simple touch. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it, that we can get so much just from the touch of another person.”

Dani nodded, keeping hold of Malcolm’s hand as she lean against him. She circled her other hand on his back as she rested her head against his shoulder. Jessica reached over the back of the couch, stroking her son’s hair. Gil left him to their tender administrations as he went to fetch a box of tissues for him. When he returned, the Tarmels watched from the kitchen island, looking as helpless as he felt. Malcolm remained curled up with Dani and Edrisa. Jessica shot Gil a look that nearly broke his heart. She wanted Malcolm to be safe and happy and knew it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

Finally, Malcolm squirmed free and bent over his knees taking several long breaths. It almost reminded Gil of some of Malcolm’s yoga poses, ones he knew that calmed the young man. He sat back up and wiped at his face. Gil passed him the tissues which he took with no words. He blew his nose after drying his face. He tucked them into his pocket.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered.

“Kid, no one is blaming you. None of us could have gone through what you did and come out the other side with no ill effects,” Gil said.

“Do you feel a little better?” Dani asked.

“I do, thank you both so much.”

“I can’t speak for Dani but you can always come to me if you need a hug.” Edrisa beamed. “Though if I’m in my lab, it might be a little smelly.”

He chuckled. “Thanks. I mean it and I’m sorry that I’m not at my best, getting to meet you, Mrs. Tarmel either of you really. I’ve only met you briefly, Tally so…”

“It’s fine, Malcolm. You’re not the first person I’ve met with PTSD,” Tally replied, her gaze sliding to JT.

“And do call me Etta, young man. Why don’t you drink your tea and maybe a little music to help you relax?” Etta crossed the room. “Is that a real record player I see?”

“Yes ma’am.” Malcolm jumped as Tommy heaved his bulk up on the couch. “Oh! Tommy’s here. I’m assuming Tuppence is running around.”

Gil nodded. “I thought you might like to have something fluffy to cuddle up with.”

“I think he found the ladies better, and you have vinyl?” JT raised his eyebrows. “Really dude?”

“I like them. I blame Gil.” Malcolm said, picking up his tea mug with one hand while holding Tommy close with the other. Tuppence made her way up on the couch with him. She parked herself along his hip.

“I’ll accept that blame. It’s probably true.”

“Oh my, you have B.B. King on the player,” Etta clapped her hands. “I love Mr. King. When I was a young woman I did some back up singing for him. One of the best times of my life.”

“Really?” Malcolm twisted on the couch so he could look at her. Tuppence protested loudly. “You’ll have to tell me about that. Sounds exciting.”

“Oh lord, he’s just rocketed to grandma’s favorite,” JT moaned sagging against the kitchen island.

“You hush yourself JT. I’ll gladly tell you all about it but I think for now something a little more mellow than Mr. King.”

“I have a vast digital library as well,” Malcolm said.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Etta replied.

“Here, Grandma.” JT went over and showed her how to turn on the digital portion of Malcolm’s sound system and accessed the library for her.

“Oh, this is perfect. You like the lovely men of 2Cellos too. You have fine tastes.”

Malcolm smiled. “You know them?”

“I love them. Perfect.” She pointed and JT clicked on the concert. “Listen to the fullness of that adagio. Does your tea need heating up, Malcolm?”

“It’s fine, Etta. I can do that if it needs it.”

“Your butt stays on that couch,” Gil reminded him. “If it’s cold, hand it off.”

“And if you don’t want green, we did make some weird black too. Edrisa brought them both,” Dani said.

“Thanks again.” Malcolm sipped the tea and Tommy nearly head butted the mug to the point of spilling. “It’s hot enough and…hmmm.” He took another taste. “It tastes like buttered veggies.”

Edrisa beamed. “That’s exactly what its mean to taste like.”

“I like it.”

“Good because the other one smells like charcoaled beef. You should pair them,” JT said. “Edrisa brought some weird teas.”

“Lapsang Souchong?” Malcolm asked of Edrisa.

“You know it?” 

“I like it. I may have a second mug.” He took another drink, and Gil allowed himself a soft sigh of relief that Malcolm seemed to be coming out of ball of anxiety he had worked himself into.

Before anyone could fetch him any, someone buzzed at the door. Gil wondered if it was Ainsley returning or did she have keys? He went to the door and pressed the intercom. “Yes?”

“Do I have the Bright residence? I’m Paige, a nurse with the Sunny Days Ahead home health agency.”

“I’ll buzz you in.” Gil did so but waited by the door just in case this was someone other than a visiting nurse. He knew Eve was safely locked away but he couldn’t relax about Malcolm’s safety, not yet.

“She’s here to change the dressing,” Malcolm said, glancing around. He scowled at his bed. “The floor is still wet over there and…I don’t want to have to explain the restraints. We didn’t hide them away.”

“Not a problem.” Dani popped up and flatted the convertible sofa from couch to bed. She patted the thick mattress. “Park it here. She’ll be able to get all around you and you know what, these pillows suck.” Dani pushed aside the small square red couch pillow. She fetched both of Malcolm’s pillows from his bed as Edrisa helped him up and over to the futon. Both of Gil’s cats meowed loudly and he shooed them away from the couch.

“Thanks.” He pulled his t-shirt off revealing all the gauze swathing his arms, torso and back. Gil shifted his gaze, unable to look at it but that’s when he saw Edrisa and Dani’s expressions change. 

_Uh-oh_, he thought. Malcolm’s well-fitted suits never failed to make him look elegant but they also hid his actual form. This was going to do nothing to end Edrisa’s obvious crush. A quick glance told him JT had noticed the big eyes and bigger pupils too judging from his eye roll that morphed into a scowl as he picked up on the fact his wife was looking too.

“Oh, I might have been hasty when I said you were slender,” Edrisa said, and Gil face-palmed as Malcolm blushed.

“Are you looking at the little white boy, Mrs. Tarmel?” JT grumbled, slipping an arm around his wife’s waist.

“Of course, we are. The little white boy has abs you’d want to lick things off of,” Etta said.

Gil couldn’t hold in the laugh as JT’s jaw dropped and Malcolm went redder than the futon and gathered his shirt against his chest.

“Grandma!”

“She’s not wrong,” Tally said, slapping JT’s arm.

He stared at his wife, shocked, then sputtered, “She’s also old enough to be his grandma.”

“Pfftt.” Etta waved him off. “At my age, I have no desire to deal with the nonsense men get up to but it doesn’t hurt to look and remember the younger days.”

“I can’t even. I’m _so_ done.” JT glared at Gil. “This is all your fault, Gil.”

“Speak for yourself, JT,” Dani said.

“And I thought you brought him home before. What are you even surprised about?” JT asked.

“Home yes, out of his clothes, no,” Dani said, carefully avoiding the fact they had all seen him naked in the box but that didn’t count. “The first night he climbed into bed fully dressed. After I left, I was like I should have taken off his tie for him at least. The second time he was tripping balls and I knocked him out cold. The morning after was going to be awkward enough after that without sprinkling the jimmies of ‘I stripped you while you were unconscious’ on top of that sundae.”

“And I am grateful for that,” Malcolm said as Paige knocked on the door.

Grateful for an escape from the awkwardness, Gil let in a waif-thin, dark-haired young woman carrying a bag that looked heavier than her. She had on a name tag with the appropriate logo. He wanted to take the bag and check it out for weapons but didn’t. He stepped back so she could get into the loft.

“Hello,” she said, glancing around obviously not prepared for so many people. 

“Hello. I’m Gil. Your patient’s right over there, the half-naked embarrassed looking fellow.”

Malcolm glared at him but raised a hand in greeting to her. Everyone deserted the living room area but there wasn’t too far to go in the apartment so they camped out at the kitchen island.

“Sorry about the entourage,” Malcolm said as she dug out a BP cuff. “They’re making sure I’m settled in and everything.”

“That’s nice. Okay, you filled out most of the paperwork before you left the hospital. Either me or Madison will be here daily until the sutures come out, just to be sure there’s no infection. Looks like these were all dirty wounds when you were brought in.”

“That’s a word for it. My right arm hurts a little. I fell out of bed earlier. I have bad dreams and…well anyhow, I’m not sure if I pulled anything.” Malcolm rubbed his arm, worry hiding in his eyes. Gil didn’t know how being scarred would affect Malcolm but being too hurt to work would destroy him.

“I’ll be sure to check you over well. How’s that foot feeling?”

“Hurts like hell if I’m honest.” He glared at the boot.

“When was the last time you put your ice on it?”

Malcolm wrinkled his nose. “I’m overdue. I had a good nap until the dream, and I’ve been a bit unsettled. I forgot.”

“Okay well as soon as we get these dressings changed, I’ll set you up. Are you good lying here?” She asked, rolling a balled device over his forehead to get his temperature.

“I’m comfortable.”

As Paige worked, Gil poured himself some of the smoked beef-smelling tea, which was surprisingly good. He spotted Jessica’s hand trembling on the counter so he put his over hers, giving it a little squeeze. She smiled over at him. He knew it was devastating for her to watch all of Malcolm’s wounds exposed, cleansed and thankfully recovered. He struggled himself with the image. A couple had bled where he had irritated them with the night terror’s damage. Gil hated seeing that because he knew they should be sealed by now.

“How’s the ankle look to you, Paige?” Malcolm asked, pulling on his shirt as she moved down to his leg.

“I think it’s looking good. No more pitting edema,” she said, pressing a finger into the swelling. Before when Rhodes had done it, Gil had seen the impression of his finger left behind. This time the skin sprang right back. “Wiggle your toes for me.” Malcolm did as she bid and Paige nodded. “Good. Now can you pretend you’re stepping on the gas, just a little, don’t force it.”

Gil watched pain etch into Malcolm’s face as he tried. The foot didn’t move much but at least it did move. Paige beamed as if Malcolm had just performed an intricate ballet. 

“Excellent. Okay, I’ll get this bandaged up and we’ll ice you down.”

Gil fetched her the ice packs. Paige made Malcolm lay back on the futon as she fastened the ice pack over his shoulder. She put the compression-ice contraption on his ankle and had him sign some paperwork before promising to be back tomorrow. Gil let her out and turned feeling his spirits lighten as he saw all the support Malcolm had with this team. He knew Malcolm wasn’t used to people caring about him so he hoped this was the start of something good, no matter how dire the circumstances were that brought it about.  
  
Chapter Eleven

as Jessica swooped over to Malcolm with a fuzzy blanket she had found god knew where. She tucked it around him tight enough to mummify him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up so very long that I had to break it somewhere. It feels a little weak as an ending but the alternative was no better. Hope you enjoyed it any how.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

After the nurse packed up her bandages and other equipment and left, Jessica swooped over to Malcolm with a fuzzy blanket she had found god knew where. She tucked it around him tight enough to mummify him. 

Malcolm eyed her as Tommy immediately rejoined him. “Mother, it’s going to be hard to drink my tea like this. Also, could you…no, never mind.”

“Oh, Malcolm. Fine, Gil, can you heat him up some of that tea so he doesn’t think I’m going to lace it with something.” Jessica untucked one arm for him.

“You have a history,” Malcolm reminded her as Dani said, “I’ll get it.”

“Thanks, Dani. You all know you don’t have to wait on me, right?” Malcolm sighed.

“Dude, exactly why do you think we’re all here?” JT glanced over at the clock. “Should we be putting on the dinner soon?”

“Dinner? What are you people planning?”

“Pot luck and it’s still early, JT,” Gil replied and JT frowned. “Yes, you’ll be eating some.”

Malcolm sighed again. “All right.”

“Malcolm, I’ve been wondering since I first entered your fantastic apartment, could I see the katana up close?” Edrisa pointed to the sword.

Grateful for the distraction, he gestured to the display. “Yes, go ahead. It’s seventeenth century and very sharp so be careful.”

“So old? Wow.” Edrisa’s dark eyes glinted as she went to fetch the weapon.

“Not to mention expensive.” Jessica rolled her eyes. Gil hadn’t been a fan originally of Malcolm’s collection but Jessica had been disinclined to deny her children anything. The collection didn’t seem to have the bad effect Gil had worried about.

“Here you go. I put in a couple sugars.” Dani handed Malcolm the tea but paused. “You’re going to need to sit up more.”

“I know but I’m rather trapped here. Mother knows how to tuck in a blanket apparently.” Malcolm squirmed, trying to free himself.

Gil helped him to sit up and Dani gave him the tea.

“You said you had something from the twelfth century. That’s crazy old.” Dani watched Edrisa play with the sword.

“The morning star.” He pointed to it with the mug. “You can take it down but it’s heavy.”

Dani went to take a closer look as Edrisa unsheathed the katana. 

“Did you know, Malcolm, that there were female samurais?” Edrisa asked.

“I’m aware of that but I don’t know much about them. Were they called samurai?”

She shook her head. “They were the Onna-Bugeishas. This sword is from the Edo period. You’ll want to look up Nakano Takeko. I think you’ll find her interesting, though the Onna-Bugeishas would have used the naginata, a type of polearm weapon.” Edrisa swung the sword slowly, testing it.

“I’ll do that. I’ll have plenty of time to read at this point.”

“I can’t believe how heavy this thing is,” Dani said, holding the morning star with both hands. “How did those men swing these in armor?”

“They were hardier than us,” Edrisa said. “That is one wicked weapon, certainly not as elegant as this katana.”

“I can’t believe you two are playing with his metal sword and balls,” JT said salaciously.

“JT Tarmel, you behave yourself,” Etta scolded, sitting down on the couch. She caught Malcolm’s eye. “Are you doing okay? You look like you’re in a lot of pain.”

“I am but it’ll be all right,” Malcolm said, petting Tommy who purred loudly. “Are you going to tell me about your time with B.B. King or would that interrupt you enjoying the cellos?”

“I wish there were more to tell. I only got to sit in a few times but it was fun. I don’t find too many young men interested in his music.”

“I enjoy it. I enjoy a lot of musical styles.” Malcolm sipped his tea. “Etta, there is something else you could tell me to take my mind off this ankle.”

“Oh?”

“What’s JT stand for?”

“Don’t you dare!” JT barked.

Etta laughed. “He would die if I told you that.”

“But I have to know,” Malcolm assured her as Dani put the morning star back.

“Can’t you ever let things go?” JT huffed.

“Nope,” Gil answered for him.

“If my son could let things go, then….” Jessica trailed off, looking away.

“My father wouldn’t have gotten caught and his kill count would probably rival the Green River Killer’s?” Malcolm’s sarcasm cut like a blade, and Jessica made a face. 

“Not quite how I’d put it, and your persistence is usually one of your better qualities.” Jessica patted his arm. Gil knew this was an old battle, not that Malcolm had turned in his father. Jessica knew that was the right thing to do, no matter how much pain it caused. But Malcolm’s insistence on the girl in the box had been a huge sticking point.

“You will not die if you don’t know what JT stands for,” JT replied as Edrisa also returned her weapon. 

“You can’t be sure of that,” Malcolm retorted. “Oh well, and Etta, I didn’t get to thank you for the cake you sent along earlier. It was very good.”

“JT said you didn’t eat the whole piece. I wasn’t sure if you liked it.” A sorrowful expression bloomed on her face.

“I did eat it! Most of it at any rate. It was pretty big.”

“Brownie, dude, brownie.”

“I didn’t get to keep most of it down but it was good and I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” Malcolm said, tugging his new phone out of his jogging pants pocket. 

“What are you doing, son?” Jessica asked.

“Looking something up.” Tuppence joined him, poking her nose against his phone. Malcolm stroked her head.

“Probably more names that begin with J,” JT grumbled as Jessica sauntered off toward the bathroom. He watched her go. 

“Looks like I’m not the only one with wandering eyes.” Tally tapped JT’s arm, dragging his attention to her.

Malcolm laughed. 

JT crossed his arms. “What’s so funny?”

“Just remembering the first thing I heard you say and realizing my mother fits your criteria.”

Tally narrowed her eyes. “Oh?”

“Rich and single.” JT shrugged. “A guy can occasionally dream even if he knows he has all he ever wants and needs at home.”

“But for the right rich beauty I’m gone.” She laughed, hugging him. 

JT glanced down the hall. “She is a rich beauty.”

“And that would be your step son.” Gil pointed to Malcolm who grinned.

“Oh, hell no.”

“My sister is also rich and pretty,” Malcolm said.

“You are marginally more acceptable as a brother in law we never ever see.” 

“You’re so sweet.” Tally patted his arm. “And if he’s kicking me to the curb, that leaves me free to marry into money too.”

Malcolm snorted. “I’m too much work.”

“You heard him, woman.” JT hugged Tally to him. “He means it. I can vouch for some of it and that’s just what he’s like on the job. Can’t even imagine having to deal with him all night long.”

“JT, don’t make me tell you to behave again. The boy is hurting and what do we do when that’s the case?” Etta gave him a look.

“Apparently cook him a seven-course meal that he’ll pick at.”

“Etta, how long will you be around?” Malcolm asked as his mother returned.

“Not long enough to beat civility into my grandson.” She wagged a finger at JT. “I plan to stay to the new year, and then I’m heading back home. Too cold for these old bones.”

“Oh, good, look.” Malcolm held up his phone. “2Cellos has a concert here just before Christmas. Would you like to go? I’d love to take you as a thank you for giving up some of your vacation to be here to help me.”

Etta beamed and she leaned over to pat his shoulder. “You don’t have to do that, sweetie.”

“I want to. I love their music. You can bring JT and Tally too.”

“I would enjoy that greatly but it’s too much,” Etta fretted.

“Not at all,” Malcolm assured her.

“What is happening here?” JT grumbled. “I don’t want to….”

Tally nudged him. “We’d enjoy the concert but are you sure?”

“You all have been very helpful to me today. I am glad of it. I honestly didn’t think I would be but…” Malcolm trailed off, his lip quivering. 

Jessica sat next to his hip, rubbing his side as tears slipped down his cheeks. She plucked some of the tissues free and pushed them into his hands. His fingers convulsed on them. Gil wished he knew what could help but he doubted there were any words he could provide that would take this burden away. Malcolm got himself under control faster this time.

“I would be happy to bring along anyone who wants to go to the concert,” Jessica said, rubbing Malcolm’s arm. “Dani, Edrisa, if you would like to go, consider it a thank you for the kindness you’ve shown my son.”

“To watch JT sit through a symphony? I’d love to go, thanks.” Dani grinned, and JT gave her the evil eye.

“I’ve sat through plenty. Grandma plays several instruments and I’ve been to her various recitals,” JT protested.

“Really?” Malcolm wiped his face, pushing up into a more seated position. “What do you play, Etta? Could we hear it you play?”

“Piano and saxophone were my favorites I taught music for a living. I didn’t bring anything with me, though.”

“We do have a piano at mother’s home if you do want to give it a try some time.” Malcolm took the ice pack off his shoulder. “I would love to hear it if you want to spend a few more hours with me one day.”

“I would love to.”

“I can’t even.” JT face palmed. “She’s going to be bringing him to all the family get togethers.”

“And if I do?” Etta swatted her grandson’s arm. “I would happily have you visit me in Savannah, Malcolm, and I’ll take you to the best eateries, put a little meat on you.” 

Malcolm smiled. “Sounds fun. Savannah has some interesting ghost tours.”

“You can _not_ believe in ghosts.” JT gently pushed his grandmother to the other side of the couch and took her seat.

“Why not? Many cultures believe in them. I know I do,” Edrisa protested, and JT shot her an ‘of course you do’ look. 

“It’s not that I believe or disbelieve in ghosts, I just like the history that goes with the ghost story. We have the Boroughs of the Dead ghost tours here. It’s pretty fun.”

“Probably too much walking for these old bones but Savannah does have a horse-drawn carriage one. That could be fun. If you come down, we’ll go,” Etta promised.

“Gil, what have you done to me?” JT groaned.

“Don’t look at me, Tarmel. You brought your grandma.”

“Can you just see these two in a car to Savannah, Tally?” Dani laughed, waving her hand between JT and Malcolm.

“Wait? Now I have to _drive_ him? I can’t fly and get it over with?” JT shot Malcolm a look. 

Etta slapped his knee. “What’s that look for, JT?” 

“That’s the look that says JT knows there is a _lot_ of real estate in which to bury me between here and Savannah.” Malcolm said but his smile was so fragile, Gil expected him to break again right there. 

“I didn’t want to say it after everything that’s happened but yeah, that’s the look.” JT grinned, reaching over to poke Malcolm’s arm. “Look, can I say something here, seriously. I heard the doc asking you to consider group therapy and watching you repeatedly falling apart here….” He pressed his lips together, gathering his thoughts. “I know I’m not telling you much new, you being a psychologist. But what you might not know is I’ve done the group thing, a veterans-only group when I first came back from the war and the PTSD was…let’s just say I know you get how bad it can be.” JT paused as Malcolm nodded, and Etta put a hand on her grandson’s shoulder. “The battle-buddy thing was helpful because we were all veterans and we all had a shared trauma that for all their training, the therapists can’t quite understand. Marchetti’s group has …”

“People with trauma similar to mine,” Malcolm broke in and JT nodded. “I haven’t ruled it out. It’s not like I’m no stranger to therapy. Thanks. Where’d that boot get off to?”

Gil didn’t like him changing the subject so desperately but answered. “On the floor right next to the futon.”

“And where do you think you’re going? You’re supposed to be keeping that foot up,” Jessica said.

“It’s been long enough with the ice and I had two cups of tea so…” Malcolm trailed off, rolling his eyes toward the bathroom. “Unless you plan on me using that urinal thing they sent home with me.”

“Don’t be a smart mouth, Malcolm.” Jessica picked up the boot. “How does this thing even work?”

“Here, let me help, though you should probably put the ice back on when you’re done. It wasn’t on very long not matter what you think. It needs a good twenty to thirty minutes.” Edrisa crossed over as Malcolm plucked the ice pack device off his leg. “Half the time the Velcro straps stick to themselves and it’s a bear to get it on.” 

“I can see that. I’m going to get tired of this thing really fast,” he said, lifting his foot off the pillow. The strain on his face made Gil want to help but it wouldn’t do much in the long run. Malcolm needed to learn how to do all these things for himself.

“I’m sure. To take you mind off things, we all could play a game for a while,” Edrisa said, slipping the boot onto his leg but let Malcolm strap it up. 

“What do we have?” He made a face as the Velcro got stuck in the wrong place and didn’t want to come free.

Dani opened the bag and pulled out two board games. “Looks like The Walking Dead Clue, which terrifies me to know what it’s about, and Klingon Monopoly.”

“Those have to be yours, Edrisa.” Malcolm beamed, managing to get his boot on correctly. He struggled to get up and Gil gave him a hand. All he needed was more pulled stitches.

“They are.”

“Let’s give the monopoly a try,” Malcolm suggested, picking up his cane. He slowly made his way to the bathroom.

“He’s not all right, Gil,” Jessica said softly once Malcolm was out of ear shot.

“No, he’s not but he’s trying. Right now, Jess, I’m not sure we can hope for more. He’s reaching out so take that as the win for the day,” Gil said, wondering if he could follow his own wisdom on this. He wanted to bundle Malcolm up and just hold him until he wasn’t sad anymore.

“I know we can’t all be here all the time but I’m willing to spend more of my free time with him so he feels less alone,” Dani said. “Because I can’t get the look on his face out of my mind, that night he was high, the excitement over maybe having a new friend and the unsurprised acceptance of the idea we weren’t actually friends yet. I…” She trailed off.

“You okay?” JT shot her a quizzical look.

She nodded. “I was just thinking about some of the things I told him about my life, things I don’t usually tell people and I did it mostly because I didn’t think he’d remember. Actually, he might have but more importantly because I felt no one needed to be that isolated and alone. I thought if I shared he wouldn’t feel that way.”

“I’m sure he appreciated you reaching out,” Gil said, appreciating it himself. 

“As do I.” Jessica plucked a few tissues out of the box and dabbed her own eyes. “I was serious about the offer to go to the symphony, if you really want to. I don’t want you to feel obligated but if you want to go, I am happy to supply the tickets. Except for you, JT. I think your grandmother will insist on it.”

“Oh, I do, and we are very appreciative of the offer,” Etta said.

The sound of Malcolm’s boot on the hardwood stopped the conversation. Edrisa and Dani set up the game board, putting it in easy reach of Etta and Tally on the couch. Dani offered to roll for Malcolm as Jessica insisted he stretch back out on the futon. He didn’t argue. Gil spotted the weariness on his face. He was still on a lot of meds that no doubt were sucking him down, not to mention the mental exhaustion but he knew Malcolm would be unlikely to go for a second nap.

They gave him a third cup of tea. Edrisa reopened the boot to put his ice back on and everyone, including Jessica crowded to the table and played the game. Etta and Edrisa took breaks to start some of the crockpots. Ainsley came in about thirty minutes into the game, just about the time Gil was remembering why he thought monopoly rhymed with monotony. 

“Do I even want to know what this is?” Ainsley perched at the kitchen counter.

“Klingon monopoly,” Malcolm said. “I’m learning the language.”

Ainsley shook her head, a lock of hair falling into her eyes. She brushed it back. “No, that can’t be right.” 

“Your mother is cleaning up. I think she owns half the galaxy,” Dani added and Ainsley laughed.

“Now that sounds right,” Ainsley said. “I mean she owns this place.”

“Really?” JT’s eyebrows rose.

“Technically the block.” Jessica shrugged.

“You are serious, aren’t you?” JT shook his head. “I knew you had money but okay yeah all I have is wow.” 

“Don’t get her started on the Miltons and their history,” Malcolm warned him. “Leave it at yes we own a lot of real estate.”

“I’ve already seen your mother’s house, which was impressive enough,” Dani said.

“I like our place in the Hamptons better,” Ainsley said.

“You have a third house?” JT asked.

“Technically Mom owns my apartment complex too,” Ainsley said as Tuppence abandoned Malcolm to sit on Ainsley.

“I can’t even.” JT shook his head.

“Don’t forget Great-Grandma’s summer cottage in Newport,” Jessica said. “It’s not as elaborate as the Astor’s or Vanderbilt’s place, no platinum wallpaper, but it is a lovely home.”

“You actually said platinum wallpaper,” Edrisa looked almost as flummoxed as JT.

Jessica nodded. “The summer cottages are something to see really. Ours is closed up for the season but if you’d like to come to dinner at my home on Boxing Day, I’d be happy to have you. It is a semi-formal charity dinner but you are absolutely welcome as my guests.”

“I wouldn’t mind paying for a charity dinner,” Etta said. “I do like doing good works.”

“It’s a thousand dollars a plate,” Malcolm said wryly.

“Oh…I’d love to go as a guest,” Etta replied, barely missing a beat.

“Gil, you need to make this stop,” JT moaned. 

“What? The melding of the Tarmels and the Whitlys, nope, you’re already lost.” Gil snickered.

JT eyed him. “Fine, if you’re serious, I can see myself eating a thousand-dollar dinner even if I have to wear a suit.”

“I might go, just to see that.” Malcolm chuckled.

“Wait, you’re not going?” Dani cocked her head.

“I wasn’t sure how Malcolm would feel attending. It was Eve’s charity,” Jessica said softly. “It is a real charity though. It does help save people from being trafficked so in spite of how I learned about it, I decided to not cancel this event.”

“Bad memories aside, Great-Aunt Gladys will be there and she’ll be after Malcolm about who he’s dating now, which….” Ainsley spread her hands.

“Yes, since the last person I went out with is now in a mental hospital after torturing me for days, I’m at loose ends.” Malcolm’s hand started shaking. He deliberately clenched his fist to stop the trembling. “I need to find someone appropriate for Gladys who is by the way the meanest woman you shall ever meet.” 

“I’d suggest you have some good choices here in those that Mother has invited.” Ainsley inclined her head toward Dani and Edrisa.

“True. So, JT, want to be my date?” Malcolm grinned.

“Someone cut off his pain pills. He’s obviously high.” JT snorted. “But I have to know what will upset her more, that I’m Black or that you like it all ways?”

Malcolm wrinkled his nose. “Good question. I have no answer because it’s both, flip a coin. Most of the remaining Miltons aren’t that bad but she’s a particularly unpleasant person.”

“Pass.”

“Mostly because you couldn’t pull off faking being in love with him. You’re not that good of an actor.” Tally kissed his cheek. “Guess you’ll have to choose between Dani and Edrisa, Malcolm.”

“Choose? Oh, no, I’ll tell her I’m with both. It can be a holly poly Christmas.” Malcolm threw his hands wide to include them both.

Dani pursed her lips. “JT’s right, you’re high.”

“I’m game if you are,” Edrisa bubbled.

Dani turned the gimlet eye on her. “You do mean pretend we’re all dating each other, right?”

Edrisa shrugged, standing up. “Sure. I better check on the soup.”

“I think we should table the game for a while and tend to dinner,” Jessica said. “And all I ask, Malcolm, is that you introduce the ladies as your girlfriends while I’m there to watch the fallout.” She beamed.

“Jess, don’t encourage him,” Gil said.

“You’d be better off worrying about if I’ll tell Aunt Gladys that you’re my date, Gil.” Jessica replied, sailing into the kitchen.

Gil blinked, too stunned for a moment to say anything. “Have you gotten into Malcolm’s pills? I think you’re both high.”

“Aunt Gladys would think you’re wildly inappropriate,” Malcolm said.

“No kidding since she thought Dad was too poor and prospect-less for Mom.” Ainsley rolled her eyes. “And that was before we found out what he was.”

“Wasn’t your father a highly successful surgeon?” Dani asked.

Malcolm nodded. “But they were still students when they got married. Like I said, Gladys is best avoided. But Mother means it. If you want to come, you are very welcome.” 

“At this point, I have to see this. I’m willing to share you with Edrisa.” Dani reached over and ruffled his hair before standing so she could join the others in getting food out.

“This might be the best dinner ever,” Malcolm said, displacing Tommy so he could sit up.

“You’re getting dangerous ideas, aren’t you?” JT asked.

“Most of my ideas usually are,” Malcolm replied, taking off the ice and restrapping the boot, and Gil snorted. That was putting it mildly.

Watching him hunt for the cane, Gil asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’m getting sore just lying here. I need to move.”

Before he could respond, Gil’s phone chimed, and he checked the text. He scowled. He didn’t want to deal with this now, right before dinner because it would upset Malcolm but maybe better now before there was food in him than after. “Walk with me,” he told Malcolm who shot him a puzzled look. He led Malcolm over to his bed and pointed. “Sit.”

“That’s not exactly helping me move. I’m stiff.”

“Sit anyhow. We need to talk.” 

Malcolm’s gaze went hotter than an acetylene torch. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You shouldn’t,” Gil assured him.

Malcolm didn’t sit, a wounded expression on his face. Gil pointed again. Malcolm eye rolled, sighed and sat. Gil hadn’t seen quite so much melodrama from him since his teen years. “What?”

“You lied to me.”

Malcolm’s eyes went wider than the Great Lakes and infinitely bluer. “I did nah-”

Gil whipped up a hand. “This is a monologue at the moment, and you _did_ lie to me. I got grilled by my bosses because you lied, and then they flipped me to the FBI to finish off.” As Malcolm lost all color, Gil hated himself for doing this now but he didn’t know how much longer he could put off his bosses now that Malcolm was out of the hospital. It was another reason he wished Malcolm wouldn’t have fought so hard to get early release. He sat next to him on the bed. “I can’t have this, kid. You know better, so that tells me you did it willingly without any regard for the consequences,” he continued and Malcolm’s head drooped. He couldn’t meet Gil’s eyes. “It’s already going to be weeks before you’re back on duty but if you can’t tell _me_ the truth, then I can’t have you back at all. Now talk to me, why did you lie to me about speaking to Paul Lazar.”

“Gil, I didn’t…”

“It’s on video,” Gil interrupted him, spotting JT drifting closer. He didn’t shoo him away because Malcolm had damaged the whole team with whatever this nonsense was and JT deserved answers too. “There was an active CCTV camera there, no sound but it was obvious you two were talking as he was crushing the hell out of you.” The snarl in his voice was unavoidable as he touched on the pain of watching Malcolm be tortured, how he could have been so simply killed out of hand. He _should_ have been but luckily Lazar acted on old warm feelings for the kid he once knew.

“He said I sounded like my father, looked like him, even smelled like him,” Malcolm said, his voice so low Gil barely heard him. “Who knew he spent so much time sniffing my father?” He tried for levity and failed.

“And? That’s only half the conversation.”

Malcolm’s hand started shaking, making Gil’s gut ache. He hated putting Malcolm into this head space but he needed the truth before he turned Malcolm over to his former colleagues. “He wanted to know how we found his hiding spot. I told him we were good at our jobs. He didn’t believe me. That’s when he cracked that rib for me.” He shuddered and Gil put a hand on his back. 

Malcolm had suffered so much this last month, Gil hated like hell piling more on. “And why wouldn’t you have told me any of this? Other than I’d know how long he had you at his mercy.”

“Because he forced the truth out of me. That I’m just like my father,” Malcolm snapped, the loudness, the pain in it, gathering everyone’s attention but Gil didn’t think he noticed. He was too busy staring at his floundering hand. Tear started trickling again. Marchetti had warned them that emotional outbursts should be expected as his mental state slowly stabilized but it was still hard to watch. “That I was so good at what I do because Dad taught me everything he knew about murder. Lazar believed that and let me go.”

“Now, there, that wasn’t that bad,” Gil said, rubbing Malcolm’s back. “What in that did you think you had to hide and lie to me about?”

Malcolm grimaced. “Did you miss the part about me being like a serial killer?”

“Gil, what are you doing to him?” 

At Jessica’s strident tone, he held up a hand to her. “Later, Jessica. And I didn’t miss it, Malcolm. You _know_ it’s not true.”

“Do I?” The brokenness in those two simple words gutted Gil.

“Name me one time that you have ever acted like your father and don’t give me the ‘I think like the killers line,” Gil said.

JT handed Gil the nearly empty box of tissues. “Isn’t that the whole damn point with profilers? Every one I’ve ever met has claimed that.”

“Exactly. That’s what all that schooling was about,” Gil said, putting the box in Malcolm’s hands. “There was no need to lie about any of this. And when you talk to the FBI, tell them exactly what you just told me. You might want to leave out the part about being just like your father but otherwise, tell them everything. They _know_ you learned things from your father. Your trips to Claremont growing up are a matter of public record.”

Malcolm nodded, drying his eyes.

“Gil, you can’t let him…”

“Jess, I have no choice. He’ll have to talk to them but it might be a good idea to take Meredith. I mean they can’t get any more pissed off than they already are.”

“That was obvious when they barged into his hospital room,” Jessica huffed.

“And I get the impression that Colette woman didn’t like him before all this started,” Dani said.

“She’s here? Well damn. She never did like me. And Gil’s right, Mother. I have to talk to them. I might be the key to finding Lazar but I’m not sure they’ll buy the fact I can’t remember the camping trip or Lazar in other than hazy fragments. What does it matter that I was only eleven and my father dosed me more than once with chloroform after it so…” Malcolm shrugged.

“He did what?” Edrisa asked, looking up from her crock pot. “That is very dangerous not to mention it could cause hepatic damage.”

“I know. He had to guarantee I wouldn’t tell anyone about the girl in the box, which I did anyhow but not before he had time to get rid of her and leaving me to spend twenty years in therapy because no one believed me.” Malcolm struggled back up, shoving the tissues in a pocket.

Jessica hurried over to him and pulled him into a hug, shocking him. “I am so sorry for that, Malcolm.”

He looked over her shoulder at Gil, his eyes huge.

“I told her about the bracelet.”

“And you should have done that yourself,” Jessica said, letting Malcolm go.

“I didn’t want….” Malcolm compressed his lips tight, glancing away before turning it back to her again. “You have enough pain.”

“I’m fine,” she said, and Gil thought they were both always so ‘fine’ when they were obviously anything but. “Now make your quick circuit around the loft and sit your butt back down. We’re ready for appetizers.”

“We are? What are they?”

“I brought a buffalo chicken dip,” Dani said. “And something for breakfast tomorrow. I wasn’t sure if you’d like something spicy but it’s one of the better things I make.” She shot him a rueful grin. “I need to up my cooking game.”

“I’ll try it. Like I said, most food makes me sick. Please no one be offended if I don’t eat much.”

“Oh, Malcolm,” Jessica moaned.

“Show of hands, how many think she says that in just that tone a hundred times a day.” JT raised his hand.

“You’re being an ass,” Dani said but her hand was up.

Malcolm gave them some stink eye and did make a circuit around his place before settling back down. Gil fetched the wooden tray Jessica had purchased so Malcolm wouldn’t have to dangle his leg at the kitchen stool. Dani put a little plate of dip and crackers and spreader. He nibbled one. “Hey, it’s very tasty. You gave me too many but it’s tasty.”

“Too many redefined as six crackers.” JT snorted.

“But there’s so much more I have to eat, right?”

“Oh Malcolm,” Jessica said again to JT’s obvious delight. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Feel like I have to unless you want a bigger mess to clean.” He narrowed his eyes at her.

“And that’s why I gave everyone a menu of things you’re likely to eat but since bread and water wasn’t enough range, I let them go off into new territory. You’ll take a sample plate.” Jessica’s tone brooked no argument and he offered none.

“Speaking of which, I better get started on my offering.” Gil took over the stove, setting pre-cut peppers, mushrooms and onions to sautéing. He turned the oven onto broil. “A word of warning, kid, Gibbons and Swanson are absolutely ripping right now.”

“I got that when Gibbons tried to interrogate me while I was catatonic.” Malcolm nibbled on a second cracker.

“No, worse. I sent them to talk to your father. He knows Lazar better than any of us.”

Malcolm shut his eyes with a little head shake as Dani set a glass of water on his tray. “I can only imagine.”

“He played them hard before eviscerating them, which okay poor choice of words but you know what I mean,” Gil said, taking the seasoned shaved steak out of the fridge. “He sent them packing, tails between their legs and they were spitting fire literally everywhere from what I’ve been told.”

“Maybe they’ll see how not like my father I am but I’m betting they’ll try to find ways to conflate our personalities.” Malcolm sighed, stopping with the second cracker. “What are you making, Gil? Smells good.”

“You’ll see and I’m sure you’re right. So absolutely take Meredith with you, cooperate, try to be…”

“Less you?” Ainsley filled in for him, ignoring her brother’s hot look.

“Not how I’d have put it,” Gil said. “Edrisa, is the soup ready?”

“Oh, definitely.” Edrisa turned to look at Malcolm. “Gil said you were pretty good with soup.”

“My brother lives on soup.” Ainsley laughed.

“This is _Tamago toji_ which is basically an egg drop soup. Well, not technically. Here in the States that’s what it’s called but in Japan the eggs are scrambled and put on top the broth. _Kakitama-jiru_ is more or less our egg drop soup but I’ve not seen it here. Anyhow, I’ve added udon noodles. It should be easy on the stomach and the egg will add some protein,” Edrisa said. “Gil, do you want us to wait on you or should we start the soup?”

“It won’t take me long. Go ahead with the soup.”

Edrisa served Malcolm first and the others dug into the pot. Malcolm took a tentative spoonful. “Oh, this is delicious. Thank you.”

“There’s plenty. I’ll leave the rest with you. That’s sort of the idea behind tonight. You’ll have ready meals for a while,” Edrisa said, her face bright.

“I do appreciate it so very much,” he replied as Tommy and Tuppence sat on the futon with him on the other side of the tray, staring. “You beasts have no prayer. I’m not sharing.”

“Do you need me to move them?” Gil asked as he flash fried the steak.

“No, they’re fine.” Malcolm said, making a real effort to finish his soup and his buffalo chicken dipped crackers.

Gil stuffed the hoagie rolls with the meat and veggies and smothered them with cheese before jamming them under the broiler. “Only a minute or two and they’re ready.”

“In that case, let’s have the sides,” Tally said. “I have maple ginger baked beans and Etta made some collards and ham. Wait until you try her cornbread.”

“I have never had greens before,” Malcolm replied.

“They’re cooked long so hopefully they won’t be too hard on you,” Etta said. “Do you have mugs?”

“Top left by the sink,” he replied.

Etta took them down and started shredding a piece of cornbread into the mug. “Would you like your cornbread crumbled-in, Malcolm?” 

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You put it in the mug with milk,” JT clarified, and Malcolm shook his head.

“No thank you. I don’t like milk’s smell. I’ll try the cornbread though.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” JT assured him.

“He can use the bread to soak up the potlikker,” Etta replied as Gil took the sandwiches out of the broiler.

Gil put one on a plate and cut it in half, and then cut the half into quarters as JT said to Malcolm, “Before you ask, the potlikker is the juice from the greens. It’s good for you and did you just cut that Philly cheesesteak into a tiny wedge, Gil? Sacrilegious.”

Gil snorted. “Trust me, he isn’t going to eat a full half. Jess, you want the other quarter?”

“Yes please.”

“And if that is good as it looks, he’s going to want more,” JT warned.

“There’s more. I’ll make another,” Gil replied.

“Fair enough.” JT snitched the other half plus a full sandwich.

Gil was delighted to see Malcolm eat everything he was given including a mug with a few ladles full of potlikker that Etta insisted had a lot of healthy vitamins in it. He even split another piece of ooey gooey butter cake with his mother. The exhaustion however was evident as they cleaned up and went back to the game halfheartedly as they talked.

“Did they find the inmate, Ainsley?” Malcolm asked as Dani moved his game piece for him.

“Not yet. It wasn’t Eve, if that’s what you’re worried about. You can find out the whole story if you turn on your TV and watch my report.” She arched an eyebrow at him and Gil watched the relief on Malcolm’s face. Guilt ate at him for not thinking to check himself on the identity of the escapee. His mind was too overwhelmed and scattered at the moment.

Malcolm made a face. “I don’t like watching the news.”

“Not with the sound on at least,” Jessica added.

“You two.” Ainsley shook her head. “I did have some more work I wanted to do on it but…”

“Go ahead,” Malcolm said. “Seriously. I’m far from alone here. I’m not going to be offended and I think it’s starting to snow.” He pointed to the window. “You might want to go.”

“You really don’t mind?” Ainsley popped up and patted his arm. “Thank you.”

“Do you need me to send for Alphonso?” Jessica asked. 

“I drove. It’s fine.” 

With that she headed out. JT and Tally stayed until Etta finished her coffee but they decided it was better to get the old woman home before the weather really turned. Gil noticed Malcolm was trying to hustle Edrisa and Dani out too until the wind started howling. He went white, sitting frozen on the edge of the futon. 

“Malcolm,” Dani said, touching his arm but he didn’t acknowledge her.

Gil sat next to him, making Malcolm look at him with glazed eyes. Had he snapped right back into catatonia? His own hands shaking, Gil closed one of them over Malcolm’s wrist. “Kid?”

“I could hear the wind screaming when I was in the trunk,” he whispered.

Gil swiped his thumb back and forth on the back of Malcolm’s hand. “You’re not there now. You’re safe here with us.”

Malcolm shook his head, teetering on the edge of something bad.

“You are. Come on, why don’t you try to get some sleep, just ignore the weather. You told your sister you weren’t alone and you’re not.”

“Okay.” He stood. “I need…never mind.” He made his way into the bathroom and looked confused when he returned that everyone was still where they were when he left. “I thought you’d have gone home. It’s getting bad.”

Dani shook her head. “We’re hanging out until you fall asleep. And I’m pretty sure that I told you I was spending the night on the futon.”

“You also told me JT was staying in a sleeping bag. I knew that wasn’t true.” He managed a weak smile but crawled onto his bed.

“But us staying is.” Dani nodded to Edrisa.

Malcolm started to strap his restraints on but the wind gusted, rattling the windows and he froze again. The ladies did fastened on his cuffs for him and pulled up his bedding. Dani reclined on the bed next to him. Malcolm widened his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Like I said, I’m staying until you fall asleep.” Dani smiled. “Maybe we’ll tell you a story to take your mind off the wind.”

“Oh, I have some stories,” Edrisa piped up.

Dani narrowed her eyes. “Are they appropriate for bed time?” 

“Okay it’s less a story but rather my favorite manga’s plot. I think Malcolm will like it.” Edrisa launched into telling them about _Full metal Alchemist_.

Jessica sat next to Gil on the couch as they listened in. To his surprise, Malcolm did fall asleep quickly but so did Dani. It took Edrisa another few minutes to notice. Behind her the window showed the thick snow that had begun to fly.

“Oh…I should probably just sit here for a few more minutes until they fall into a deeper level of sleep so I don’t wake them up,” she said.

Those few minutes had Edrisa out like a light and Tommy and Tuppence joined them on the bed. Jessica stood up. “Well, hopefully he doesn’t end up knocking them out of the bed or accidentally blackening their eyes. I’m going to turn in myself.” She pointed up.

Gil frowned, thinking of the chaos that a night terror would cause if Malcolm started flailing around, hitting both women. He should probably wake them up and move them off the bed but they all looked so comfortable. Maybe the company would help Malcolm remain peaceful based on all that stuff Edrisa had said about the power of touch. He turned his attention back to Jessica. “Are you going to be okay up there? You’ll have to come down the steps if you need the rest room.”

“There’s a better bed in the loft, better than that futon at any rate. I’ll be fine.”

Gil let Jessica have the bathroom first. Once she was upstairs, he got ready for bed. As he stretched out on the futon, he hoped Jessica’s wish would come true and Malcolm would have a quiet night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year's everyone. I hope to have the final chapters in Jan.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Malcolm woke up, disoriented but for once, not screaming or panicked. He felt oddly relaxed, yet shocked by it. Very little light came through the window so it was early still. He shifted, freezing instantly. He widened his eyes, realizing Dani rested snuggled up against him, her head on his shoulder and his arm aching under her weight. His stitches itched. Malcolm raised his other hand to gently push her off and roll out the other side. His fingers grazed another warm body. He turned his head, his jaw flopping open. Edrisa slept soundly on her side, her backside pressed against his hip.

For a second he had no idea what the hell had happened the night before. Slowly memories of his freaking out over the fierce wind filtered back to him and of the women sitting with him on the bed and telling him stories to calm him down. Everyone must have fallen asleep that way and neither Mother nor Gil had rectified the situation. He nearly snickered, absurdly proud of himself for sharing his bed without a night terror to ruin it.

Malcolm scanned the room, his eyes adjusted to the low light level. Tommy had made a nest of Dani’s hair but Tuppence wasn’t around. More disturbing, he discovered the fact that part of him was _very_ happy to be in bed with two women. Malcolm made a face. _Damn morning testosterone peaks!_. He had to pee, and he wasn’t going to be able to pee through _that._ Sending up a prayer that the ladies would stay asleep until his errant body part gave up the ghost, he turned his head. All he could see of Gil was his arm dangling off the futon and Tuppence curled up on his hip. Someone moved in the kitchen, keeping their movements soft: Mother. He hoped to hell she hadn’t noticed _him_.

Malcolm shut his eyes, preparing to wait out his erection. He fell promptly back to sleep. When he woke back up, more light poured through the big window. He was still surrounded but he smelled coffee and heard Gil and his mother whispering to each other. When Malcolm shifted his weight, Gil glanced over and grinned. Before anyone could say anything, Dani squeezed Malcolm tight, her eyes fluttering open. They popped wide when she saw they were almost nose to nose. Malcolm smiled at her.

“Morning,” he said, like this was an entirely normal morning.

A flush rose over her features. “Oops. Guess I feel asleep here.”

“And you’re not alone.” He squirmed so she could see Edrisa who’d begun to stir. “And you have a cat in your hair.”

She batted at her hair, still disorientated with sleep. “That would explain why I can’t move.”

“And here I thought it was because you were really comfy here,” he said, his mouth running away from him.

Dani smiled. “You’re feisty in the morning.”

He chuckled, trying to sit up but everything was stiff and hurt. His bladder screamed. “Don’t look now, we have an audience and they were whispering, probably conspiring.”

Dani flopped over, displacing poor Tommy. Gil and Jessica waved. Dani put a hand over her eyes. “Oh god.”

“There are other problems,” Malcolm said.

“Other than we fell asleep here?” Edrisa said blearily. 

“Morning, Edrisa. Yes, the problem is I’m sort of stuck here in the middle,” he said, undoing his cuffs. “My stitches are hurting and pulling and I _really_ need to get up, if you know what I mean.”

“You’re not the only one,” Dani said, bailing out of bed. “But you’ll be faster than me or Edrisa.”

“Probably not as slow as I’m going but thanks.”

“It’s your home,” Edrisa said. “You go first.”

Malcolm nodded, managing to sit up on the edge of his bed. He truly didn’t want to get up. He _liked_ this morning and he wanted to stretch it out. His bladder hated him for even thinking it. Dani handed him his cane and he thumped along with his stupid boot. “Hope I didn’t bruise you up with this thing, ladies,” he said as he walked.

“I’m fine,” Dani replied.

“Doesn’t matter if you did. Bruises heal,” Edrisa added.

“Thanks.”

He meant that. The only way he could repay this early morning kindness was to pee quick and brush his teeth and hair almost as quickly. He surrendered the bathroom to Dani while Edrisa made the bed for him. Malcolm sat at the kitchen island with Gil and his mother who put a cup of coffee in front of him.

“Morning, Sunshine. You had a very good night. If I thought it was viable, I’d hire your friends to stay here every night,” his mother said.

Malcolm rolled his eyes. “My place is a little small for that and I’m pretty sure they have better things to do, especially once the screaming starts again. But it was a good night.”

“And you definitely liked waking up that way.” His mother arched her eyebrows at him.

Gil looked up at the ceiling, rubbing his forehead. Malcolm planted his face into the counter, nearly taking the cup of coffee out. He waited for his blush to melt his pill containers and turn the water in the sink’s pipes to steam. 

“Mother!” he moaned into the counter top.

“What? It’s natural.”

“Gil…”

“I lost control of any of this some time yesterday. You’re on your own. Take your pills,” Gil replied.

“Did he die?” Dani asked, returning.

“He wants to,” Malcolm muttered into the kitchen island. He pushed up off the top and Gil guided the pill bottles his way. 

“Drink your coffee, Malcolm, and I’ll heat up the breakfast Dani brought,” his mother said.

Malcolm glanced over at Dani. “You made me breakfast?”

She shrugged. “It’s a make-ahead dish. A lemon raspberry French bread casserole.”

He blinked. “And you told me you needed to step up your cooking game. That sounds pretty good to me.”

“You haven’t tasted it yet.” 

“It’s a good morning so far so I choose to have faith.” He smiled as Edrisa stumbled her way back out of the bathroom.

“Coffee ladies?” his mother asked.

“Definitely for me,” Dani said. “Thank you.”

“I could take some.” Edrisa yawned, sitting on the other side of Malcolm. 

Jessica poured them both some and pushed the creamer and sugar bowl to them to help themselves. “What is on your agenda today?”

“I still have the day off,” Dani said. “How bad did it snow out there?”

“Bad enough,” Gil said. “Glad I don’t have to be out in it much.”

“I’ll have to go in,” Edrisa said. “But not just yet.”

“Hopefully it’ll be better soon.” Malcolm glanced over his shoulder to study the weather outside his window. “If Meredith is free, I want to go in today and talk to the FBI.”

“Oh, Malcolm, no. You don’t need to be dragging that boot and all your stitches through the slush,” his mother protested.

Malcolm shook his head. “I do have to, Mother. The FBI has frozen our team out of the investigation into Lazar. They’re going down the wrong track and I can’t let them do that any longer. They’re focusing on me, and if they keep doing that, Lazar is going to keep on killing. We need to stop him before that happens.”

No one said anything. Gil’s gaze slithered away. Dani concentrated on stirring her coffee and Edrisa’s expression was one of pity. Malcolm’s stomach flopped. He’d already ruined the morning.

“He’s already killed, hasn’t he?” 

“While you were in the hospital,” Gil said.

“You should have told me,” he snapped.

“You were catatonic and afterward you needed to rest, Malcolm. We were going to tell you and it is not on you. Gibbons made the call to antagonize Lazar. This kill’s the FBI’s fault,” Gil argued.

Malcolm took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves before it got out of control. 

“Listen to Gil, Bright.” Dani put a hand over his. “This is not on you.”

“Why does it feel like it is?”

“Because you always take on too much that isn’t your burden to carry,” Gil replied.

Dani slid off the stool. “Let me microwave you some breakfast and you try to relax, okay?” When he nodded she added, “Want some, Edrisa?”

“Yes please,” she said, just as her phone rang. Edrisa fished it out of a pocket, scowled and answered, “Dr. Tanaka speaking.” Her displeased expression deepened. “I’ll be there are soon as I can.”

“Is it our team?” Dani grimaced, obviously not wanting to go in. 

He didn’t want either of them to leave. The desire to keep them here, to have the company shocked Malcolm. 

“No. Waters’s group. It’s not far from the subway here, is it? I cabbed over,” Edrisa said as Dani popped a wedge of the casserole into the microwave.

“You’d be better off cabbing to work,” Malcolm said. “Especially in this mess.”

Edrisa nodded. “I’ll call for one. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m sorry you have to go out into that mess,” Malcolm replied.

“Well, at least I have a new puzzle to solve,” she replied. “Is it all right to leave my games here so I don’t have to carry all that into work?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Leave everything here. It’s not in the way.”

The microwave dinged and Dani pulled out the casserole, placing it in front of him. Malcolm pushed it to Edrisa.

“Here, you have to leave. You take the first piece. I’ll heat up another for me,” he said. 

Edrisa’s smile warmed him. “Thanks, Malcolm.”

She ate quickly as Dani microwaved a replacement for him. Edrisa thanked Dani, cautioned him to stop dangling his ankle and put his ice on his ankle before she slipped out, having devoured the French bread casserole. Dani provided him another plateful of the casserole. Malcolm took his usual tentative taste of something new. He suspected it wouldn’t bother him. Bread was easily digested but lemon could be a strong, acidic taste. It and the raspberries certainly woke up his tongue. He took a bigger bite.

“Dani, you’re wrong. You do not need to up your cooking game. It’s fine where it is,” he said and to his surprise, she glanced away shyly.

“You like it?”

“I do. Thank you for breakfast. Mother, Gil, are you eating?”

Gil took Malcolm’s breakfast away. “We ate while you were still out cold.” He pointed to the futon which no longer had sheets on it. “Go put up your foot. You can eat off the tray.”

“I’ll get his ice,” Jessica said. “And I’ve texted Meredith. You are _not_ going to talk to the FBI without representation. I don’t care what anyone thinks that looks like. Between your temper and your need to accept blame that isn’t yours, you need someone in there with you.”

“Mother,” he sighed, thumping his way with his fork in hand to the futon. He shot Gil a look as he sat down and levered his leg up. Damned if Edrisa wasn’t right. Dangling his foot had jumpstarted the pain.

“Don’t look at me, kid. I’m with your mother on this.” Gil set the tray next to the futon and then rested the plate on the tray.

“For what it’s worth, so am I,” Dani added, sitting on the couch with her own piece of breakfast casserole.

Malcolm forced himself not to frown. “It’s not a bad idea but it will certainly start the discussion wrong-footed.”

Gil sat on the edge of the futon and started unfastening all the straps on Malcolm’s boot. “It’s already wrong-footed. Gibbons, Walker, Swanson, none of them are your friend. You need to face that. They are out for blood, and it doesn’t matter that you’ve been hurt or that you have absolutely nothing to do with Paul Lazar. “

“I realize that and I’ll take Meredith.” It was easier to give in than to fight and what was he fighting for? They were right. The idea of going alone was him being bullheaded. 

“That’s all I ask if you’re insisting on doing this,” his mother said, handing off the ice to Gil.

Malcolm tried to hold his leg up so Gil could slip the boot off. He gritted his teeth as pain lanced up his leg. Gil wrapped the towel-covered ice pack around his ankle, and Malcolm hissed, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Malcolm, you’re in so much pain. You should stay here,” his mother said.

“I don’t want them in my home,” he argued. “I need to do this so I have to go to the station. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

“You can’t but I know you’re not going to change your mind. Gil, you’ll be taking him right?”

He nodded. “I won’t be allowed into the interview but I’ll be in the building.”

Malcolm pushed his breakfast to the edge of the tray, uninterested in it now after this turn of conversation. His mother caught Dani’s eye, and he knew it was going to go downhill fast from here.

“Will you go with Gil too?”

Dani nodded. “I can go in for moral support from a distance, if that’s okay with you, Bright. You look upset.” 

He was but it was for no good reason and he had no idea how to articulate why he was getting angry. “That’s fine,” he whispered.

Dani set her breakfast on the coffee table and walked over to other side of the futon. She sat with him and took his hand. “No, it’s not and it’s okay that it’s not.”

The tears hit so fast, so unwanted, he couldn’t stop them. Malcolm did the only thing he could: shield his eyes with his free hand. Her arms went around him, drawing him closer over top of the tray, which Gil deftly pulled out of the way. Malcolm melted against her, hating himself for it. He shouldn’t put the burden on Dani. For a moment, all Malcolm could do was absorb her warmth. Her soft, sweet scent filled his senses. He squirmed away, withdrawing into himself.

“Look at me, Malcolm,” Dani said as his mother pushed a box of tissues against his arm. He took them, using them as another shield, not obeying Dani. She rested a hand on his knee. “I want you to eat your breakfast but you’re not going to if you’re worked up. Put the whole interview aside and talk to me about something else.”

He dabbed his eyes but he didn’t respond right away. “Like what?” he managed finally, hoping she could, in fact, distract him from the bonfire in his brain.

“I don’t know. Tell me something fun, maybe another thing off your bucket list since you ticked one off last night.” Dani’s smile looked as fragile as he felt.

He cocked his head as Tommy jumped onto the futon with them. “What bucket list thing did I check off?” Well, it had been his first sleep over but he was about twenty years too late for that and it wasn’t something he’d have put on the bucket list.

Her brittle smile strengthened as her eyes sparked. “You can’t say you haven’t slept with anyone anymore.”

A bark of laughter escaped him, it and her comment taking him by complete surprise. “You’re right, I can’t. And it turned out better than expected. I didn’t manage to hit you or Edrisa or knock you out of bed or any of my usual night time nonsense.”

“You definitely had a good night.” Dani took his breakfast and handed it to his mother. “Can you reheat this?”

She nodded and obeyed somehow still surprising him. He never associated his mother with obedience or knowing her way around a kitchen.

“Though I’m not sure how any of that came to be.” Malcolm glanced toward his bedroom. “I know you both were there because the wind freaked me out and I remember Edrisa telling us about her favorite manga.”

“You fell right asleep and I guess I did too.”

“Almost as quickly,” Gil said. “Edrisa didn’t want to wake you. She wanted to wait until you were both more deeply asleep so her getting off the bed wouldn’t disturb you and then she was out like a light. It was rather amusing.”

“And you looked comfortable so we left you there.” His mother shrugged. “Malcolm was restrained so the worst that would have happened if you might have gotten kicked if he started up.”

“I will say that new bed was damn comfy because the next thing I knew was waking up wrapped around you.” Dani stroked Tommy’s head, trying to hide her embarrassed expression. 

“He didn’t hate that either.” Jessica presented him with his reheated meal.

His face flushed hotter than the casserole. “Mother!”

“That’s okay, Jessica. I had a clue about that.” Dani laughed at him. “And he still owes me a story about something good or bucket listy.”

“Me sleeping through the night isn’t good enough?”

“No one wants to hear your threesome fantasies. Tell her something better.” His mother wagged a finger at him.

Malcolm let his head drop back against the pillow, groaning out ‘mother.’ Why wouldn’t the floor open and swallow him on command? Dani didn’t help matters as she giggled. Gil shook his head.

“How about the first time you went on a stake out with Gil? Or were you pulling my leg about that?” Dani got up and went back to the couch and her own breakfast.

“No, that happened. I can thank Great Aunt Gladys for that,” he said.

“The mean woman? How?”

“Gladys has always disliked Malcolm,” his mother said as he took another bite of casserole. “Even as a child.”

Dani scowled. “What could you have done to her?”

“Near as I can tell, it’s because I have a penis,” he replied.

His mother gave him stink eye. “I wouldn’t have put it so crudely but it’s accurate. She never liked him or Martin even before we knew what Martin had done”

“She doesn’t even like her own son’s much,” Malcolm said. 

“True. She doesn’t like men. However, when she summons you to stay for the week, it’s just better to do it.” His mother made a face. “Malcolm was just getting back to speaking again and I didn’t want to have him henpecked to death.”

“Not to mention I’d have rather hammered a nail into my eye than go,” he muttered. 

“So, Gil and Jackie said they’d watch Malcolm. Everyone was happy with that arrangement even Gladys, though she might have thought that Gil was carting Malcolm off to juvie.” His mother laughed.

“It worked well until Jackie had to work and Malcolm didn’t want to have a sitter,” Gil took up the story.

“I didn’t _need_ one,” Malcolm protested. “Or so I thought. I wasn’t quite twelve so what did I know?”

“I knew I wasn’t watching a particularly dangerous person so my partner at that time and I took him with.”

“How fast did you make Gil nuts?” Dani grinned, and then popped a piece of casserole into her mouth.

“I was a good boy,” Malcolm said at the same time Gil said, “Less than five minutes.”

“Ha, I’m going with Gil’s assessment of this.”

Malcolm spread his hands “Okay, he’s probably right but it wasn’t a bad night. It was the first of many and it helped me.”

“It’s where it all started,” his mother said, bitter as an IPA.

“Mother, is there any mint tea in my pantry or did Edrisa leave her ginger?” he asked to distract her. 

She brightened. “Ginger yes. Do you want me to make you chamomile?”

“Never, it’s gross. I’ll take the ginger. Anyhow, that first time staying with Gil and Jackie started something big. If Mother and Ainsley wanted to go on a trip together and do things juvenile me found boring, I went with Gil. More than once we went on vacation together. We all went to London. That was a bucket list for me, I guess but I was thirteen and didn’t know what that was then.” He grinned as his mother handed over some ginger and she went to put on tea water.

“You went too, Jessica?” Dani asked.

“I did but Ainsley and I did boring things like shopping.” She smiled that sickeningly sweet smile that she reserved for when Malcolm was annoying her. “Jackie and Gil took him to the Tower of London.”

“I’ve always wanted to see it. You had to be excited.” Dani said.

“I was. I was all over that place. In retrospect, Gil and Jackie were probably ready to chuck me off the tower.” He gave his head a rueful shake.

“Right into the river.” Gil chuckled. “You were so eager to learn everything so it was hard to blame you. Jackie wasn’t much less excited than you anyhow. Right up until you decided you _had_ to see Highgate Cemetery.”

“A cemetery?” Dani eyed him.

“Have you looked at Victorian cemetery art? It’s beautiful. Of course, back then I just thought it was creepy cool and it had a vampire legend which made it cooler.”

“You were a weird little boy, weren’t you?” Dani beamed, and he pouted at her. “Was this in your snake phase?”

“Just before,” he admitted.

“And it was honestly an interesting trip,” Gil said, standing up. “He’s right, the art on those crypts is amazing.”

“We had other trips too but that one was the first big one and it was fun,” he said but his tone changed and Dani picked up on it. He hadn’t successfully hidden some of the pain wrapped around that because his mother had been hurt by how close he’d gotten with Jackie. He shot Dani a pointed look, and she didn’t question him further.

As the kettle whistled, Gil made his way back to the bathroom. His mother turned off the heat.

“What do you want me to make if you don’t want the chamomile,” she asked.

“He likes Earl Grey,” Dani piped up. “If he has any.”

“I do. That’ll be fine. The coffee is just harsh today and I want to keep breakfast down. You know how unfamiliar I am with the idea of eating this weird meal people think we need right after waking up,” he said trying to lighten things back up.

“It was a good breakfast,” Jessica said, rooting in his cabinets.

“It really was,” he said to Dani, pushing his plate to the edge of the tray. “Thank you. Also,” he beckoned for her to come closer. 

Dani pulled the tray to the side and sat next to his hip. She helped him close the distance between him as his stitches pulled and ached. 

He whispered to her, “Just FYI, when I woke up they both were watching us three. I think they might have blackmail pictures.” He grinned.

Dani snorted. “Gil doesn’t need that to keep me in line. It’s you who doesn’t behave and….I’m screwed aren’t I? Because most men are probably going to chest thump and brag about being in bed with two women.”

Malcolm made a disgruntled noise. “I think I might have to defend men against that slur but I probably can’t. However, I am a gentleman and the only person I even _know_ in these parts who wasn’t in the room when we woke up is JT. It would make him nuts and maybe not in a good way.”

“I don’t know how he’d take it but it’s not like anything other than a good night sleep happened.” She tapped his chin. “Ready for that ice pack to come off?”

“Yeah. It’s getting warm,” he said. “And see what Mother is doing to my tea.”

“I don’t need to mix in any valium today. You got a good night’s sleep,” she replied archly as she brought him his tea. “Do you want more of the casserole?”

“No, I’m good,” he replied as Dani took away the ice pack and Gil reappeared with Tuppence in his arms.

“Good because Meredith texted to say she can be free all day after one. She’ll rearrange her schedule to go with you if you think the FBI will talk to you today,” his mother said.

“I’ll check with Gibbons,” Gil said, cross to the far side of the loft to call the FBI in relative quiet.

His mother pulled the tray close to the futon again, but not over him like he’d had it for breakfast and put his tea on it. She took away the breakfast plate. 

Dani picked up his boot. “Do you need help or do you want to try this on your own?”

“I guess I better get used to doing it for myself.” He struggled up, feeling his stitches protest. “I’m already tired of all these damn stitches. They’re pulling.”

“Probably itch too unless that was just me.”

“Not just you. I’m tempted to ask Mother to dig out my cheese grater so I can scratch these things properly.”

“Do leave your skin intact. The good doctor went through great effort to patch you nicely,” his mother replied.

He flashed her a smile because he didn’t want her to worry more than she already was but Malcolm glanced away quickly because his control slipped a few gears. Looking down at his swollen, insanely painful foot the gears stripped entirely. He struggled to breathe.

Dani, not looking at him as she undid the Velcro straps that had clasped each other like a strappy octopus, missed his expression as she said, “This is looking a lot better, Bright. Your toes are pink again. When we first found you, I thought your foot didn’t stand a chance, it was so swollen.”

He knew Dani had seen him in the trunk. She’d probably seen the videos of what Eve had done to him. Until now he could pretend that she hadn’t seen him like that, so vulnerable and afraid, so filthy, naked and broken. And not just her. Gil and JT had seen as well. They all knew the worst of him. The enormity of it battered down his defenses and Malcolm couldn’t stop the walls from falling. The broken sob echoed like a shotgun blast in his loft. He curled up, his bad foot dragging along the futon, shooting fire up his leg and forcing a moan out of him.

“Malcolm!” his mother cried at the same time as Dani.

Dani crawled up the futon and grabbed hold of him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He couldn’t tell her it hadn’t been her. He couldn’t speak, only capable of hiccupping cries. Instead, Malcolm wrapped his arms around her, clinging to her. He shouldn’t need this, shouldn’t need comforting. He had already asked too much of her. The hole inside him would drain her empathy dry but he couldn’t let go. Dani’s strong arms encompassed him, holding him close as she rubbed his back and whispered to him, soft soothing sounds. A hand touched his leg and he jumped, nearly knocking Dani in the chin as a sharp noise escaped his lips.

“Sorry,” Gil said, slipping the boot over Malcolm’s ankle. “You’re going to hurt yourself more without this.”

Malcolm drew in several deep ragged breaths but still couldn’t find his voice. His mother sat on the futon on the opposite side of him from Dani and she sandwiched him in, much like Edrisa and Dani had the night before. Slowly, he gathered the threads of his shattered control. He tried to make his fingers let go but they refused. Finally, he pushed away from Dani but couldn’t squirm far because his mother had him hemmed in.

“Need...air,” he muttered and both of them got off the futon.

Malcolm flopped to his back, putting both hands over his face, the dampness under his fingers deepening his sense of shame. He felt someone sit back down with him but he refused to drop his hands and look. “I don’t know why I can’t stop this,” he groaned.

The person sitting with him touched his belly and without looking he knew it was Dani. “Malcolm, you’ve been wounded inside and out. Your skin and ligaments won’t heal for weeks so why in the hell are you expecting your mind to heal instantly?”

He stammered something that might have been ‘because’ but his brain and tongue weren’t communicating well. He didn’t know why he thought he should be fine. Was it because men were trained to be always healthy, always strong, always fine? Women were the ones prone to hysteria. How terrible that patronizing idea still existed in this day and age. It was a disservice to women and men alike. “If I’m not fine, then I have to face that I’m a mess.”

“Bright, you _are_ a mess and that’s okay. You’ve more than earned the right to be a damn mess,” Dani argued. “Why put yourself through the trauma of not allowing yourself to feel all the turmoil inside yourself, to allow yourself your pain? You’re going to dig the hole deeper, make yourself more agitated and anxious.”

“I’ve been telling him that for years. Maybe he’ll listen to you,” Gil said, shifting his weight off the futon now that he had the boot back on Malcolm’s foot.

Malcolm let his hands fall, tears still trickling out of control. His mother handed him a fresh box of tissues. He tore into them, wiping at his face. Dani stretched out next to him, leaning back on the arm of the futon. She rested a hand on his arm, a frown blossoming as his trembling translated to her fingers.

“Gil, get him a blanket. He’s clammy. Bright, look at me,” she demanded. 

He tried but she was in a shrinking frame. _Oh, it’s not her. I’m fading,_ he thought. Malcolm drew in a deep breath and the room stabilized. Gil tucked the blanket around him and Malcolm snuggled into it. He tried to push away Dani but she resisted. “You don’t have to be here, Dani. I’ve taken enough of your energy already.”

“You’re not taking it. I’m offering it, big difference,” she replied, tugging him closer. “Maybe you should drink some of your tea, warm up inside.”

Malcolm flailed with one arm trying to find the tray with the cup. Gil pushed it closer and handed the mug to him. Malcolm sipped it, cradling the mug close to him. He mouthed thank you to Dani, leaning his weight against her. He shut his eyes for a moment and Dani covered his hand with hers. Malcolm sipped more tea trying to quiet his raging mind. Normally he turned to yoga to help with that but he couldn’t do it now, wouldn’t be able to do it for some time. That hurt.

“Malcolm,” his mother said softly, hesitantly as if afraid to do or say anything. “I know you’re determined to go today. I don’t want you to but you have very valid reasons to forge ahead with talking to the FBI. But if, after this, you need more time, you take it, son.”

He nodded. “I’ll be okay.”

“No, I don’t think you will be but you’ll sacrifice your own peace for the greater good. You always have and I am constantly in awe of that, proud of you and terrified all at once,” his mother said, going to his kitchen. Where did she find the bottle of bourbon he wondered as she tipped some into her coffee? Gil must have brought it. “But promise this, you’ll listen to Meredith, Malcolm.”

He tried not to meet her eyes. He didn’t want to make the promise even though it made sense. He felt the weight of her gaze combined with Dani and Gil’s. “I’ll listen to her counsel.” 

“Dani, will you be there?” his mother asked. “I know I’ve already asked that and I understand you can’t be in the room but in the station? You said you could be.”

“I’ll head out of here soon, got to feed Sunshine,” she said. “And then I’ll be at the station. And if you need to come into Gil’s office and close the curtains, and curled up on the couch, I will be there.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, wishing his voice was stronger, that he could look her in in the eye and say how much he appreciated her. Malcolm could only hope she knew.

“JT will probably be there too.” Dani raised her eyebrows. “I’ll set him on guarding that door if need be because we know he’s not the cuddly type.”

Malcolm snorted and nearly drowned in his tea. He set the cup aside and wiped at his face. “You tried to kill me.”

“Ooops.” She grinned at him. “Feeling any better now?”

“A little, thanks to all of you.”

Those words weren’t enough but they were all he had. It seemed to be enough. Malcolm shut his eyes again, sinking a little lower on the futon as he pulled the blanket up to his jaw. He let himself be in the moment, to just enjoy the companionship in the room. He would need something as a touchstone for later. Even with Meredith he knew it wasn’t going to be an easy interview and he would need all his reserves to make it through.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since we don't know too many of the FBI agents nor any of the other detectives/upper brass at the precinct I've created a few for this chapter.

Chapter Thirteen

“I think you have taken up more than enough of Mr. Bright’s time,” Meredith stared down Gibbons, Walker and Swanson across the interview table. 

Malcolm distractedly wondered if anyone was annoyed to have a conference room tied up so long. Meredith Ramsey had refused to allow this conversation to take place in an interrogation room as if Malcolm were a criminal especially since he worked here. Gil brought the matter to his bosses, and they agreed so they had been in the conference room for two hours. He shifted his numb butt around on the chair. His ankle was in the process of murdering him for having it down for so long and his temper ran so hot and wild he struggled to rein it in. He deserved a medal for keeping his voice as calm as it was but he had his right hand pinned between the arm of the chair and his thigh to keep it from shaking. 

“He still hasn’t given us adequate answers,” Gibbons replied and Malcolm honestly had no idea what in the name of god the man wanted of him. Gibbons had been on his firing board along with Walker. Had that not been punishment enough? Did they somehow believe he had a dozen dead bodies under his floorboards? Maybe he should have let them into his loft so they could take a deep sniff around for decay. Neither of them were profilers like Swanson who had never liked him, seeing him as always believing women were responsible for men’s misdeeds. Sometimes mothers did shape killers. Sometimes fathers. He didn’t believe, for the most part, people were born evil though his own father gave him pause in that regard. 

“What haven’t I answered?” he asked, and Meredith shot him a harsh ‘keep your mouth shut’ look.

“About your connection to Paul Lazar.”

“I have. He claims to be a friend of my father’s and I believe him. He kept my father’s station wagon for two decades as either insurance or more likely a trophy. He shot at me in that junkyard. He called my mother’s home and I foolishly followed him into a subway tunnel,” Malcolm said for about the thirtieth time that afternoon.

“And lied about it,” Walker sneered, her pale face blotchy with her own raging temper.

Malcolm glanced at Meredith. She had already given him permission to address that idiocy of his but he wanted to quadruple check it. She nodded and for the fourth time he replied, “I was embarrassed and rattled when I made my report to Lieutenant Arroyo. I should have died in that tunnel. I let the Lieutenant down and I was ashamed to tell him that I had to beg for my life and say whatever it took to make Lazar let me go. He was obviously fond of my father and me explaining about my father telling me about murder mollified him. He gave me a chance I didn’t deserve.”

“That’s the part that puzzles me,” Colette Swanson said, honestly sounding it. At the moment, she didn’t have the anger her coworkers did. Oh, she still didn’t like him; he could tell but Lazar’s letting him go had engaged her profiler’s mind.

“I don’t fit his mission but he made it clear next time he _will_ kill me,” Malcolm replied. “And he claims I’ve met him.”

“But you conveniently can’t remember,” Gibbons ground out. “Just like you were conveniently catatonic when we needed to talk to you last time.”

“Trust me, there was nothing convenient about it,” Malcolm snapped back and under the table, Meredith put a hand on his knee in warning. “I’ve told you all I know. I swear. All I remember of him is from my night terrors. I remember running in the woods. I can’t tell you why and I’ve already speculated on it.”

“Which I told you not to,” Meredith cut in, squeezing his knee harder.

“I know but I think in order to understand Lazar, Colette especially needs to know what I think and that is I believe Lazar and my father did kill as a duo at least that once. Did they take me out there to try to induct me into their killing team? I think so but it could all be a dream. I know that doesn’t make you happy. It sure as hell doesn’t make _me_ happy. I didn’t remember Lazar until he called my mother’s house. I still don’t have much of a mental image of him and I had our sketch artist draw that up before you even came on board. I’ve told you where to look for potential suspects.”

“I’m not sure one hospital is going to turn out two serial killers,” Walker said.

“Bright might be on to something. There is precedence for killers meeting at work. Whitly was a premiere surgeon,” Collette contradicted her. “He had a notoriously busy schedule. If the testimony of a kid and his mother is to be believed, when not at the hospital, Whitly spent most of his time at home until the end when she believed he was having an affair. It would make sense he’d find a partner where he spent most of his time.”

“I agree,” Malcolm said. “I’ve done what you asked and stayed away and now I’m sidelined for months with these injuries. I’m willing to help go over the evidence with you but you don’t want me to. If you change your mind, I can do that here in the office.”

“But you won’t tell us what went on in those woods. If you took part in a murder,” Gibbons said.

Meredith held up a hand. “He’s already told you all he knows about that incident if it even happened.”

“I _don’t_ remember. I was a child who was repeatedly drugged by my father after that camping trip and finding the girl in the box. You don’t believe me and I can’t change that.” Malcolm shrugged. “Talk to my father. He knows what happened. He won’t tell you. He won’t even be honest about that with me but you can try.”

“We got nowhere with him,” Walker said.

“Not surprised.”

“You do realize that Lazar has killed again and you’re not being helpful,” Gibbons growled.

“I’m being as helpful as I can, and yes I do but I was in the hospital with no contact with him. I didn’t kidnap Eve and take her to him. You’ve seen the videos of what happened. I can take my shirt off and prove that it wasn’t faked. She sliced me up like a holiday ham.” Malcolm took a deep breath trying to calm himself back down.

“And this conversation is circling. He’s answered all this already. Mr. Bright isn’t responsible for Paul Lazar’s actions. He’s not on the case at your insistence. We’re done here,” Meredith said.

She stood and Malcolm followed her lead. It was true. He’d had helped as much as he could, put himself in the frame with his honesty about the dream and what he thought it meant, and if it had helped, he couldn’t say. He couldn’t do any more damage to himself nor help them more than he had. He limped heavily on his cane, feeling their gaze burning into his back. One of them, Gibbons he thought, made a disgusted sound as if he thought Malcolm was putting the limp on.

Malcolm didn’t even look back. He had to let it go. They were never going to forgive him for being his father’s son. He had a team that accepted him now and that’s all that mattered. Gil’s office door was open but the curtains were pulled. Malcolm knew that was for him, a safe haven. All he had to do was hobble his way over to it. Meredith murmured something about excusing herself for a bathroom break but he paid her no mind. Dani was at another detective’s desk but Malcolm didn’t know the woman. Dani glanced his way, scowling at something behind him. He tossed a look over his shoulder and saw all three FBI agents following him but it seemed to be Colette that Dani was concentrating on. They must have had some interactions.

Not sure he was up to talking to anyone, he planned on walking past Dani. She’d follow him into Gil’s office without him asking based in the morning’s discussion. She widened her eyes looking ready to say something. Before he could ask, he heard someone’s loud excited voice just before that someone collided with him. The young detective hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going and he lost his extremely full coffee cup all over Malcolm most of it draining right into his surgical boot. Malcolm yelped at the same time the man cried out, “I am so sorry!”

“Bright!” Dani ran to him, steadying him as he shifted his weight off the booted foot. 

Suddenly JT was there too, taking Malcolm’s weight against him as Dani knelt to rapidly work the Velcro straps so she could get the sopping boot off his foot.

“I am so sorry,” the young detective said again.

“Hey Westfall, do you know who you just scalded,” someone called from across the squad room.

The horror filling Westfall’s eyes hurt more than the blistering hot coffee. Malcolm knew rumors hung around the station about him, like cobwebs at Halloween. Someone had told this young man horror stories about him, probably heavy on his father’s bad deeds.

“Dudek, shut up,” Dani snapped as Gil ran out of his office and helped JT support Malcolm so he didn’t have to put his injured foot on the ground. She handed the boot to the female detective she’d been talking to. “Krista, can you take this to the rest room and put it under the dryer so I can help get the wet bandages off Bright’s foot.”

“Sure.” Krista took it and walked toward the rest room. 

Hating he needed help, Malcolm resigned himself to letting them all but carry him into Gil’s office and put him on the couch. He didn’t have to be told to get his foot up. Gil jammed a pillow under it but kept his hand between Malcolm’s foot and the pillow to keep it dry. Out of the corner of his eye, Malcolm spotted Captain Sciarra, one of Gil’s bosses hovering in the corner of the office. She must have been talking to Gil – probably about him – when the accident happened.

“The dressings are wet,” Gil said. “Dani, there are scissors in my desk drawer.”

She nodded. “JT, want to call Edrisa and see if she wants to come reapply the dressing until we get Bright home and his nurse can check him out.”

“Will do.”

“I’m really sorry,” Westfall said again, clinging to the door frame as if he wasn’t sure what to do.”

Malcolm held out a hand toward him. “Detective Westfall isn’t it?” he asked and the young man bobbed his head. “I’m okay. It was an accident, right? You didn’t purposely pour coffee all over me.”

“No of course not,” he said as Dani started cutting away the drenched dressing. Captain Sciarra brought over the garbage can for her.

“Then stop apologizing. I’m fine and you’re freaking me out a little.” Malcolm smiled, trying to hold the smile steady as the stitches pulled, stuck to the dressing, making him ache. He dug out his wallet and pulled out a twenty. “Go get yourself another coffee.”

Westfall didn’t come into the office. He eyed the money suspiciously. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Sure you can. I got in the way and we crashed. It’s the least I can do. If you feel it was your fault then get me a coffee while you’re at it.” Malcolm didn’t know if he could rehab his reputation around the station with one small gesture but it was worth a try. Captain Sciarra took it all in silently but her expression seemed favorable at least.

Westfall came in, not meeting Gil’s gaze after a quick look at the lieutenant. “Thanks. I appreciate it. What would you like, Mr. Bright?”

Malcolm shrugged. “I live off sugar. Anything sweet works for me. I’m easy ah!” He jerked as Dani’s fingers brushed a very sensitive part of his ankle. She had the dressing off and Gil rested Malcolm’s ankle on the pillow. Sciarra scowled at the swollen appendage.

Westfall glanced at the wound, paling a bit. “That looks…”

“Fine,” Dani interrupted him, probably afraid Malcolm would cry again like he had this morning. 

He was too damn angry to cry at this point, especially spotting Colette, Walker and Gibbons crowding the door. “It’s healing,” he said. “If you get me a latte, 2 percent milk please, but I prefer mochas.”

“Of course, you do,” JT said and Malcolm summoned up enough of his natural sarcasm to roll his eyes.

“I can get you that. I’ll be back. It might take a few minutes. There’s usually a line,” Westfall said.

“That’s fine,” Gil said, shooing him off.

Westfall broke through the FBI line and Edrisa came in the other way before they could regroup. Colette moved in her wake. Gil shot her a warning look as Edrisa sat on the floor and opened a sack of dressings, alcohol and scissors. Sciarra parked herself against the edge of Gil’s desk, just watching like a hawk. Malcolm could see the wheels turning and doubted she’d do much to draw attention to herself. She wanted to see what the FBI was about to do.

“That looks ugly.” Colette flicked a hand toward his ankle.

“I assumed you watched the video of what Mallory did to me. What did you think it would look like?” Malcolm sniped, his patience fraying. “Or did you all decide that it was faked because she and I are somehow working with Lazar? Or that I’ve invented bad deeds to pin on a woman and did this to myself.”

“You have a history with your mommy issues,” Colette replied.

Dani stood up, facing off with her. “I’ve worked with you now for a few days while Bright was in the hospital. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re any good at your job or that interested in doing it,” she snapped and Colette reared back ready to snarl but Dani continued, “If you were a competent profiler, you’d know all of Bright’s issues are daddy ones. I’ve watched him with his mother interacting for days now and they’re close. I’m sure they have their fights but sometimes women do bad shit too. It’s not the solo providence of men. And while you three are busy trying to burn Bright at the stake, are you making any progress on the Lazar case other than to incite him to kill again?”

“You tell them, Dani,” Edrisa said, sponging the coffee off Malcolm’s foot. Dani shot her a wry grin.

“Dani, it’s not worth it. You’re not going to change their minds,” Malcolm said. “It’s okay.”

“For them to treat you like garbage? No, it’s not. I got hijacked into helping them and when I realized they were far more interested in putting the blame on you, I decided I’d much rather be doing anything else.” She stabbed a hand at Colette and the others. Behind their backs, Captain Sciarra thinned her lips, perhaps regretting having assigned Dani to help the FBI but probably had little choice. “I want to help find Lazar but what have we really done to do that?”

“We have done something,” Colette said, her face hot. “We needed to go back to the beginning to see it with fresh eyes.”

“That works when a case has gone cold. We just found Lazar’s killing grounds when you came here and took over. What you mean is you want to throw out everything our team has done, everything that Bright suggested and go at it another way,” Dani said, her voice going arctic. “I’m not saying looking at it from a different angle is wrong but you dismissed everything Bright suggested and given his track record with our team, I think that’s foolish.”

“I’ve worked with him in D.C.,” Colette replied, her tone as hot as Dani’s was cold. “He’s destructive.”

“You forgot a word,” Dani said, and Colette cocked her head. “Self. He’s _self_ destructive. He runs into danger too easily.”

“And how long before that gets you or Detective Tarmel killed?” Walker interjected.

“Did he get anyone killed in the FBI? If so, that’s news to us,” JT said, shocking Malcolm.

“He’s not a team player,” Colette said.

“He is _here_,” Dani countered.

“Because you and JT didn’t automatically dismiss me because I’m the Surgeon’s son,” Malcolm said, knowing that in fact they nearly had. They hadn’t wanted him in the beginning because of it but Gil wouldn’t allow them to force him to the periphery and with a little time he had won them over a little at least. However, he wasn’t about to tell Colette that. “I can’t be a team player when _no one_ wants me on the team. You put me on the outside from the moment I graduated from Quantico. I was unwelcomed and I knew it. Ironically both Lieutenant Arroyo and my own father warned me it would happen but I naively thought my skills, my insights would matter. But all you ever let me be was the Surgeon’s Son, waiting for the day when the prodigal would come home and be just like his father. You never gave me credit for the empathy I have. That alone separates me from sociopaths like Martin Whitly. At least Detectives Powell and Tarmel trust me enough to give me a chance.”

“And they may regret it,” Colette replied.

“That’s their concern. Right now, I’d like to know why you’re in my office harassing Bright especially when you have work to do and his lawyer isn’t here,” Gil said calmly as Captain Sciarra straightened up, looking ready to join the fray, and then he cast a glance at Malcolm. “Where is she?”

“Rest room,” he said just as Edrisa finished with the bandages and started to pack up. 

“I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my office so I can do my work and you can do yours,” Gil added.

The phone rang before any of them could reply. Malcolm watched Gil’s color fade and it slowly sank in that was the phone Lazar used that they had a trap and trace on. 

“Answer it,” Gibbons ordered, pointing to Walker. “The rest of you get out.”

“It’s _my_ office and Bright can’t walk until Krista brings back his boot. I’m not carrying him through the station like a child,” Gil said.

‘_Again_,’ Malcolm thought, and then said, “We’ll stay out of the conversation but you need to answer that phone. You _should_ let me talk to him.”

“Not happening, Bright,” Colette said as Walker picked up the phone and handed it to Gibbons.

“Hello,” he said, thumbing on the speaker phone option. “Is this Paul?”

“Now who is this?” Lazar’s voice echoed from the phone syrupy and mocking. 

“Special agent Gibbons.”

“I have no interest in you. Put Malcolm on.”

“You’ll be speaking to me,” Gibbons replied, color inching up his face.

Lazar chuckled “I think not. I _know_ Malcolm is in the building.”

Malcolm shivered at the arctic front moving into him as he exchanged glances with Gil. Lazar was close. Gibbons gestured to Walker who exited the room ostensibly to get the cops out there sweeping the area. Sciarra closed the door, leaning against it. She glared at Gibbons.

“Malcom Bright has nothing to do with this,” Gibbons said, ignoring Sciarra.

“Are you an idiot? He’s the reason I’m calling. He’s been a bad boy or at least from what I heard at the Wired Puppy from the two lady FBI agents. They were laughing about the two women who spent the night with him last night.”  
Gil and Malcolm exchanged glances as Edrisa dropped her bag of dressings. Dani thinned her lips, her fists clenching.

“What base behavior. Who knew little Malcolm would turn out to be such a sinner? He might benefit from some time with me.” Lazar chuckled darkly.

Malcolm licked his lips, his mouth dry as a frigid winter day. “The FBI is watching my place? Good to know,” he said loudly enough for Lazar to hear him. Gibbons’ face purpled. 

“Malcolm, there you are.” Lazar drew out his name in an eerie echo of the way Martin Whitly said it. Malcolm didn’t have to guess where he got that affectation from.

“I’m here for now, Paul. Did the agents mention that my mentor was also at my place as was my mother? They obviously made last night sound like a salacious and tawdry threesome. I don’t care so much on my behalf but I deeply resent the agents smearing the name of a good detective and a doctor. It was mean spirited and unprofessional because I _know_ they were well aware I wasn’t having some incestuous orgy with my _mother_,” Malcolm fought to keep his voice leveled out, to bite back on his fury. He glared at Walker and Colette. The latter of whom had the good grace to look embarrassed but was it because of her part in bashing him Dani and Edrisa or because she now knew that Lazar had been in a coffee shop within earshot and she hadn’t noticed him? Had he changed his appearance?

“They did not mention your mother was there. I wouldn’t have thought so lowly of you had I known.”

“That’s enough,” Gibbons said. “Bright, I will have you removed from the room if you don’t shut up. You’re impeding this.”

“The FBI doesn’t want me talking to you because they think you and I are colluding. They’ve considered that I might possibly know where you are and I’m not telling them because I’m picking up where my father left off.”

“Now that’s a laugh. Listen Special Agent Gibbons, I’m not talking to anyone but Malcolm. If you make him leave, the conversation is at an end. If you let us talk, maybe you’ll learn something.”

“Do it,” Sciarra said.

Gibbons gritted his teeth and slashed a hand at Malcolm. “Fine.”

“Now isn’t that better? So, Malcolm, you got taken. I saw it on the television.”

Malcolm sat up on the couch, putting his foot down gingerly since he hadn’t the boot to protect him. “Julissa Lostetter’s daughter wanted to make me pay for what my father had done.”

“Is it true what the lady agents said about her using sex to catch you?”

“A simplification but yes,” Malcolm said, his hand beginning to tremble. “I’m so glad that my love life is such a great topic of conversation that people who barely know me can talk about it so much.” He shot them another glare. They wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“You suspected nothing? You must not have known her well. What would your father say if he knew how loose you are with women?” Lazard mocked him, unwittingly preying on Malcolm’s own fears and recriminations. Hadn’t he blamed himself for falling into bed with Eve so quickly and getting captured? Hating himself, he couldn’t stop a few silent tears streaking down his face right in front of everyone. He hated Gibbons and the others saw his pain. “Maybe I wasn’t hasty in thinking you were delivered to me to deal with. I thought maybe you were put in my path to help me or stop me but maybe it was for me to purify you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Malcolm saw everyone’s ears perk up. “I’m here to stop you, Paul. I did find your last hiding hole.”

“Because you’re like me and your father but for the FBI in the room, you’re not enough like us. You’re a little coward.”

“I’m not a coward,” Malcolm said, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “And I did nothing wrong with Eve. I thought she was a friend.”

“I can hear it in your voice, the fear and guilt. You know you did wrong. You’re afraid of the consequences. How long did you know her, Malcolm?”

Gil shook his head at Malcolm but he answered Lazar anyhow. “It was our first date but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a connection. It just wasn’t the connection I thought it was.” He ground his fist against his eye.

“You keep telling yourself that. And you had other visitors, didn’t you, Malcolm? An old lady and a younger one but at least they didn’t spend the night.”

Next to him, JT stiffened, fury etched into his face. Malcolm’s hand shook, unable to be calmed by his usual method. “Are you following the FBI, Paul? Or did they just do the debriefing at the damn coffee shop?”

“You have interesting friends, Malcolm. Are they as permissive and dirty as you?”

Malcolm laughed, bitter as green berries. “Not me, Paul. I have no friends. What the FBI saw, no matter what they made it sound like, were co-workers bringing me food so I’d have ready-made meals as I deal with what happened to me. It’s what cops do when someone needs help. Trust me, right now there is a detective running errands for me because he’s afraid of what the son of the surgeon will do to him if he doesn’t. No friends, Paul, just people too afraid of me to even think of being friends. The way the FBI agents were no doubt mocking me should have been a clue.”

Paul chuckled. “They do seem to hate you. Did you date the black lady agent? She has that hate for you that intimacy breeds.”

“We went on a couple dates but were never lovers. We have vastly different philosophies and understandings of the world and she definitely saw me as the enemy very quickly. I can forgive her that.” He wiped his cheeks and Colette pinned him with her hot glare. “But I can’t forgive putting a target on innocent people. You leave those ladies from last night be, Paul. They don’t fit your mission at all.”

“Why do you care if they aren’t friends?”

“Empathy, Paul. I _have_ it. The FBI doesn’t understand that. They accused me of being just like my father.”

“You told me that much yourself.”

“Because you were snapping my ribs! I lied to make you stop but I’m not exactly like you,” he snarled.

“No you aren’t. You don’t have the integrity. Lying, snooping, fornicating, you are a bad boy, Malcolm, no better than an animal. Did you lie to her to make her let you go?”

“No, she didn’t ask me anything. She needed nothing of me other than to suffer and die like her mother had.”

“She hurt you bad. I saw you with your cane and boot. She broke you like a wild horse and I’m betting you didn’t make it hard. Like I said earlier, you always were a little coward. That was a shock on our camping trip, that Martin’s prized little boy could be so craven. Do you have any idea how proud your father was of how brilliant you were? How disappointed he was when you ran after just a little blood. Hell, I was the one bleeding after you stuck me. Who could have guessed it would send you running blind through the woods at night like a little sissy.”

“That wasn’t cowardice, normal people normal kids don’t want to stab people,” Malcolm said softly hating the conformation of his worst nightmares were real and so very public. All of them were staring at him like he was a monster. He had stabbed Lazar? How could he have forgotten that? Why had he done it?

“What’s normal, Malcolm? People like you, rutting indiscriminately, shooting yourself up with heroin, selling yourself for a taste of it?”

“Like you mother did?” Malcolm interjected, squirming to the edge of the couch.

“She was no mother,” Lazar screamed. Malcolm managed a triumphant look for Colette, feeling a bit petty as he savored her sour look.

“Did you know we talked about killing you that night? That’s why we were there. We were going to kill you. It would have been so easy. You ran off, afraid of a noise in the night and you raced off a cliff. Your mother would have believed that. Or maybe you fell out of the boat and drowned but Martin loved you too much. Truth be told, I liked you too. Martin was sure he could keep you quiet. Didn’t have to, did he? You were such a coward, you blocked out all memory of that night, including me. Isn’t that what you said?”

Wilting under the harsh gaze of his companions, Malcolm scrubbed a hand over his trembling lips. “I don’t remember you or that trip. My father didn’t think I was a coward Paul, though he did say fear was my stumbling block.”

“Same difference.” Lazar snorted. “Did you kill the person who took you? Or did you botch it like you did with me? Have you ever killed anyone or did you just keep disappointing your father?”

“I killed a man with the FBI.” Malcolm fought to ignore JT, Dani and Edrisa’s stares. “I didn’t mean to. I shot him in the shoulder but he ended up going septic and died.”

“Did you feel excited?”

Damn, Paul sounded so smug. “I wept for days. I felt horrible. I didn’t want him to die. I’m known for talking people down, to get them to surrender. And no, I didn’t kill Eve, no matter what she did to me. I’m helping her lawyer get her into a psychiatric hospital, instead of jail.”

“Sounds more like you need the psychiatric hospital, Malcolm, because that’s a crazy response to being kidnapped and tortured.”

“Again, it’s called empathy. My father destroyed Eve’s life.”

“Would you show me empathy if I take you for a little alone time, Malcolm, or that mother of yours?”

Fire lit up his face as he clenched his hand. Gil stepped over to him but Malcolm shrugged him off. “Come at my family, Paul, and I’ll show you exactly all the things my father taught me.”

The delight in Lazar’s laugh sickened him. “That’s the man Martin wanted you to be. Well, this has been fun and I’m sure there’re cops swarming around like someone stirred a hive with a stick. I’ll call you, Malcolm, if I don’t see you first.”

He hung up before Malcolm could respond. All eyes were on him. Malcolm met JT’s gaze. The worry in his dark eyes took Malcolm’s knees out from under him. Malcolm swore he literally felt his color flee. Sweat popped out all over him. The shakes migrated from his hand to the rest of him.

“I’m sorry, JT. I’m so sorry,” he whispered, barely able to hear himself as if he were wrapped in a dozen blankets. “They’re in danger because of me.”

“Not you, bro. Your buddies in the FBI,” JT growled. “Hey, you okay?”

No, he wasn’t but Malcolm couldn’t answer. The room spun around him, twisting him like wet clay. All he could see was Etta Tarmel dead in a car crusher because of him. Vaguely aware of Dani and Gil calling his name, he tried to stand. Pain raced up his injured leg and Edrisa grabbed his arms, forcing him down.

“He’s going into shock. Gil, do we have blankets? Coats? Anything? We need to get him warm. JT help me keep him seated,” Edrisa ordered. “Malcolm, you can’t stand up. You’ll hurt your foot. Lie down on the couch.”

Wasn’t he lying down? He couldn’t tell? His stomach lurched. Was that awful sound, like a car-struck animal, coming from him?

“Dani, garbage can,” Edrisa barked as she swung his legs back up onto on the couch with him. She yanked his shoulders to the side so he could lean over the cushions, and then sat in the crook of his hips. _Man, she’s stronger than she looks. Guess moving dead people does that for you,_ he thought, as ludicrous as it was.

Dani slammed the can down and not a moment too soon, Malcolm twisted and emptied himself into it. His stitches shrieked with the movement. He grabbed up the can, vomiting harder, his chin touching the lips of the can. When finally, nothing more came up, Gil thrust some tissues into Malcolm’s hand. He wiped his mouth, trembling so hard, he could barely manage. The room morphed into a whirlwind again and Edrisa took his hand.

“Look at me, Malcolm,” she said. “We need to focus on your breathing. Let’s breathe together.” She took a few deep breaths but iron bands surrounded his chest, robbing him of his air. “You do yoga. I know you’re aware of dragon breathing. Try it for me, Malcolm.” Edrisa closed off her left nostril with her thumb and breathed in through the right. She switched compression sides and breathed out the left. Gil draped a jacket around him as Malcolm struggled to follow Edrisa. After a few alternations, he managed to follow her until his awareness was solely on his breathing, the shaking slowed.

“There you go. Keep breathing nice and slow.”

“That was one helluva show,” Gibbons grumbled earning hot looks from Malcolm’s team and Captain Sciarra.

“That’s no show,” Colette said, surprising him. “Look at Bright. His pupils are blown. He’s diaphoretic and vomiting. He can fake the shaking but he can’t fake autonomic fear responses. He’s terrified and it’s our fault.”

“Yes it is,” Gil said. “Now my team needs protecting.”

“Yes, they do,” Captain Sciarra said. “I’ll start authorizing round the clock surveillance for everyone. The FBI should foot the bill. Let’s go talk about this elsewhere.”

“Don’t you think we should discuss this now,” Gibbons said, waving a hand between them and Malcolm. “He just spent all that time on the phone with a serial killer.”

“What’s to discuss?” Gil asked. “You heard what we all heard.”

“He backed up what I told you,” Malcolm whispered.

“And no one finds that suspicious?”

“No, because we know Bright is not working with Lazar,” Dani said. “Apparently he stabbed Lazar, probably because they were going to kill him.”

“So much for the empathy and helping the one who hurt you,” Gibbons sniped. “What a load of crap you sold him about Lostetter.”

“Actually, he had instructed Meredith Ramsey to find someone willing to represent Mallory Lostetter and see if the D.A. would be willing to put her in a high security psych hospital,” Gil said, throwing open his door. “Go ask her if you don’t believe me.”

Gibbons stalked out followed by Walker and Swanson. Captain Sciarra went with them. Malcolm put his shaking hand over his mouth, trying to ignore the sour taste inside it. 

“I’m so sorry, JT. I never meant to put your family in danger.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” JT clasped a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder. “They’ll be okay.”

Malcolm knew they couldn’t guarantee that but he wasn’t going to take that hope away from JT. He let himself be distracted by Krista returning with his boot and Detective Westfall coming in, two cups in hand with Jessica Whitly on his arm. What in the hell? Malcolm blinked at them as he struggled to sit up. His mother’s face fell, her nose wrinkling up.

“It smells like vomit in here. What did they _do_ to him, Gil?” she demanded to know.

“I’ll tell you in a moment, Jess,” Gil said as Dani took the boot off Krista with thanks. Krista took a look at the tableau in Arroyo’s office and left after surrendering the boot. 

Dani put it on Malcolm’s foot as Westfall edged in closer, his eyes wide. Malcolm wasn’t sure what he thought was about to happen. 

“I got you a salted caramel mocha. I hope that’s okay.” Westfall looked around. “Is this a really bad time to give it to you?”

“It’s not a great time but that’s not your fault.” Malcolm held out a hand. “Thank you, that sounds delicious. I appreciate it.”

“I’m sorry about scalding your foot.” Westfall held out the change but Malcom put up a hand. Westfall scowled and set it on the table.

“It was an accident. You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not my father.”

“He’s really not,” his mother said.

Westfall glanced at her. “You know him?”

She smiled her cat got the canary smile. “I’m a bit familiar with him.”

“She’s my mother, Detective Westfall. I’m not sure how you got to talking…”

“The door was closed and we were told to keep away,” she replied. “I’m hoping someone will tell me what’s going on soon. Anyhow we were chatting while we waited.”

“Really? His mother? You don’t look old enough.” Westfall flushed. “What I mean is.”

His mother patted Westfall’s arm. “You can stop there and thank you for the compliment.”

“I better get back to work. And thank you for being cool about the accident.” Westfall saluted Malcolm with his own coffee cup before heading out.

“You’re welcome,” Malcolm called after him. “Mother, what _are_you doing here?”

“I thought you might need moral support, and from the smell of this room and the look on your face, I was right.” She scowled at Gil. “Now that everyone but us is gone, can you tell me what happened?”

“I will. Why don’t you sit?” He gestured to the couch next to Malcolm.

Edrisa moved from her spot on the couch so his mother could sit. “Malcolm, are you going to drink that?” 

He nodded. “I think I can handle it and the sugar might help.”

“Okay then I’ll take the trash bag down to the red bag disposal in my lab.” She rooted in the dressings bag and came up with gloves. 

“You’re going to get tired of dealing with my sick stomach really fast,” he muttered, deeply embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Edrisa.”

“It’s all right. Again, not nearly the grossest thing I’ll do all day.” She flashed him a reassuring smile.

“No, I meant, I’m sorry you’re a target now too. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“Target?” his mother asked, and he raised a hand to her.

Edrisa waved him off, and then grabbed up the trash bag, tying it off. “Like JT said, not your fault. I’m sure I’ll be fine. And while I’m busy today and tonight, I’ll be around tomorrow with some more food.”

He shook his head violently. “No, I can’t let you take that risk.”

“The good thing is, you don’t control me.” She gave him a knowing look. “I get to make that choice. Besides, your place will be buttoned up tight. It’ll be safe. We can play Clue this time or I can bring Cards Against Humanity. This really seems like a good time for that.”

Malcolm bowed his head, knowing he wasn’t going to win that. “I’ve always wanted to try that game, thanks.”

“Good. I’ll see you then.” She wiggled her fingers at him and disappeared out the door.

JT shook his head. “You and she are going to have the smartest, weirdest kids ever.”

With that JT broke the tension and left Malcolm giggling on the edge of hysteria. Gathering his scattered wits, Malcolm rolled his eyes toward JT. “Hey, JT.” When Tarmel looked, Malcolm flipped him off. JT burst into laughter.

Malcolm’s mother slapped his hand. “Malcolm! I taught you better.”

“Leave him be.” JT held his sides, still chuckling. “That’s the first normal thing I’ve ever seen him do.”

She shot him a sour look. “Will someone tell me what is going on?”

“Mother.” He took her hand. “I want you and Ains to go on vacation. Rome is nice this time of year. Hawaii too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t care where you go, just go. Escort Etta and Tally to Savannah for all I care. _Just go._” He hated the shrill tone of his panic.

“Malcolm, what is wrong? You’re scaring me.”

“You should be scared, Jessica,” Gil said.

“Paul Lazar called. He made veiled threats about coming after everyone at my place last night. He heard the FBI gossiping about me,” Malcolm babbled, anger boiling out of him. “He was _here_ just down the block. He will _kill_ you or Ainsley. Worse, Dani, Edrisa, Etta, Tally, all of them were targeted.”

“Oh my god!” His mother squeezed his hand hard. “He’s _not_ running me out of my home.”

“Why?” His voice broke. “You take vacations. Take one now, damn it. Take me with you! I need to recover anyhow. I can do that in Vegas or London. Let’s just go.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” she replied in a tone that said ‘no, they wouldn’t talk about it’.”

“Please, it’s bad enough that everyone needs police protection.”

“And that’s not negotiable, Jess,” Gil interjected and she arched her eyebrows at him.

“And like Edrisa, I’m not leaving you alone, Bright. Me and my gun are going to be in your loft tonight,” Dani said, and he shut his eyes tight. He didn’t want any of this. No one should risk themselves for him. “Safety in numbers.”

“Then maybe we should stay at my house,” Jessica said.

Malcolm shook his head. “Lazar has _been_ there. He knows the house. He doesn’t know my loft. We’ll be safer there if more crowded. You’ll have to be sure I’m restrained at night because no one needs me sleep walking in the middle of a night terror with guns around.”

“I hate this.” His mother’s lips trembled. “I hate that you have to be chained to your bed. I hate that _another_ serial killer is after us. I hate that you were tortured by your father’s victim. He has destroyed so much of our lives.”

“And maybe we should be sure he can’t destroy more by getting out of here for a little while,” he said.

“We’ll discuss it later, not here,” she repeated, pulling him close. “Where’s Ainsley? Is she safe?”

“We’re tracking her down now,” Gil said. “With her job, she’s in the public eye, not an easy target. We’ll send someone to keep her safe and bring her to Malcolm’s as soon as she can. I need to talk to Captain Sciarra and make sure the team is protected.”

“Good.” She stroked Malcolm’s hair. “Why don’t you shut your eyes and rest, son? At least until Gil can do what he needs to and then we can go home. You need to relax. That had to have been a bad panic attack.”

“It was,” he said, folding up against her. Malcolm couldn’t shut his eyes as he rested his cheek on her shoulder.

Colette popped back into the office. “Lieutenant Arroyo, the captain wants to speak with you.” Her gaze cut over to Malcolm but he didn’t pick his head up off his mother’s shoulder.

“Told you that you were wrong about his mommy issues,” Dani said. 

“And you’re taken in easily. He’s an angry man.”

“I am,” Malcolm said. “And so are you. I know it. I admit it. You don’t. It clouds your judgment and while you’re good at your job the anger, the arrogance and the disdain for men keeps you from being great.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “And I’m not sure I believe you about your plans for Mallory Lostetter either.”

“I don’t care.” This time he did shut his eyes, and listened to Gil chivvy her out. He didn’t sleep, too worked up about JT’s family, his own, his friends. Malcolm wasn’t sure he’d sleep again any time soon. All he wanted to do was go home, burrow in and protect what was his.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

“Are you sure you want to be doing this?” Gil asked as they walked through the halls of Claremont. He carried a small duffle bag of dressings that had taken five minutes to be cleared by security. The sour scent of bodies and antisepsis assaulted their senses. His surgical boot sounded like thunder as it echoed in the corridor. 

Malcolm knew Gil didn’t want him here. Mother had melted down over it. Ainsley had wanted to come. He’d firmly nixed that idea. Technically he didn’t want to be doing this. He _had_ to. Big difference. “Lazar is after everyone I care about. My father has answers. He will only give them to _me_ and you know it.”

Gil scowled but didn’t protest. “You should have accepted the wheelchair ride here. You’re over doing it on that ankle.”

“I’m fine.” He tried to smile through his pain.

Gil rolled his eyes at the blatant lie. Malcolm sweated. His stitches yanked with every thump of his cane and his ankle made him rue the day he was born. But he’d be damned if he showed up in a wheelchair in front of Martin Whitly. Mr. David opened the door even before they knocked, having seen them through the glass. He widened his eyes a bit at the sight of Malcolm’s rough state.

“Hello, Mr. David,” he said, pretending there was nothing wrong.

“Good afternoon, Malcolm.” He stepped back, letting them in. 

“Malcolm, my boy. It’s good to see you,” his father said with his usual cheeriness, already standing at the line at the edge of his tether. This time his hands weren’t cuffed to his waist. The computer was up and running on his desk so he must have been working. His father’s smile flipped upside down. “Oh, you brought _him_.”

“The other way around,” Malcolm replied as Mr. David brought over his chair so Malcolm could have it. Malcolm refused it, even though his ankle currently hated him.

“Sit down, son. You look awful.”

“And who’s fault is that?” he snapped, his temper getting the better of him. The rage slithered off his father, not putting a dent in his façade.

Gil pointed to the chair, putting a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder. Malcolm eyed him hot as a poker but he sat himself down, biting back a groan as he off loaded his swelling ankle. His father’s jaw tightened when Malcolm obeyed Gil and not him. _Damn, that was dumb. Now he’ll guess Gil means something to me. No, he probably figured that out when Gil visited for information last time._ Malcolm stared at the floor. His father was ridiculously perceptive so he was best off avoiding direct eye contact at the moment. His father walked to his desk and picked up the small footrest. He carried it over and dropped it at the line before stepping back several paces. Gil slid the foot stool into position and Malcolm heaved his booted foot up.

“Thank you,” he said reluctantly. 

“Tell me, Detective Arroyo,” his father said, making his name sound like a particularly virulent strain of STD. “What was the final clue that led you to my son?”

The smirk fading into his father’s curly beard told Malcolm Martin already knew the answer. He was just digging in the knife.

Gil took up residence to the side of Malcolm, his face glacial. _Good, Dad isn’t going to rattle him._ “You recognizing Julissa Lostetter’s eyes in Eve’s face. We wouldn’t have found Malcolm nearly as quickly otherwise.” Gil gestured to Malcolm. “It wasn’t fast enough to prevent this.”

“It happened the night she took me.” Malcolm rubbed his boot. He didn’t want Gil to feel guilty about his injuries. 

His father returned to the line, his eyes wide. “How bad is it?” His dad did have some concern for him and Malcolm hated that it mattered to him. 

Malcolm expected the question. The one thing Gil didn’t fight him on was displaying just how injured Malcolm was. As much as Martin Whitly wanted to intimidate Gil, that was how much Gil wanted Martin to know the damage he had wroth even unwittingly. Malcolm undid his boot’s Velcro, having gotten practiced now and slipped his foot free. He peeled off his sock that the doctor insisted he wear since he usually eschewed them, and undid the dressing just enough to show off the stitches, still clotted with dried blood since he wasn’t meant to get them wet yet. Thanks to the walk here his ankle had puffed up like a child holding his breath. Gil eyed the renewed damage, a mix of pity and anger etching into his face.

His father’s jaw clenched, working side to side for a moment. He balled his fist against the soft fabric of his cardigan. Malcolm briefly wondered who in the hell was giving this man sweaters. “Is it as bad as it looks?”

“She destroyed all the ligaments laterally and a couple of the medial ones. It will be months before I can walk normally again, _if_ I can.”

There was no hiding the mounting fury in his father’s eyes. If Mallory was here right now, his father would reduce her to her component parts without breaking a sweat, no doubt enjoying every slice. Malcolm wanted to enjoy Martin Whitly’s pain more than he was. His father took a ragged breath, unclenching his fists. “That is a devastating injury.”

“I know. I’m living with it,” he replied, bitterly, not about to let his father off the hook. He pushed the tape back down but it didn’t stick well. Gil fished more tape out of the dressings bag and handed it to him. He didn’t strap up the boot. The ankle felt better free but he might regret it later. He took off his jacket and undid the buttons on his dress shirt.

“What are you doing, son?”

“You need to see the rest. Mr. David, could I have a garbage can, please?”

David brought over and Malcolm shed gauze 4X4s into it, one after the other off his arms and chest. He held his arms out of the side, vulnerability sliding over him like a blanket. Gil didn’t want to look at him. Malcolm read it in his eyes but he didn’t look away either. He wasn’t going to show any weakness in front of Malcolm’s father whose face had gone blotchy with rage.

“She was cruel to you.” 

“No crueler than you were to her mother. The only difference is the team found me before she could finish me off,” Malcolm spat. “I’ll spare you the brand on my thigh made with her mother’s name.”

He watched his father’s throat work as Martin swallowed hard. His cheery façade shattered and for a brief moment. Malcolm saw the monster beneath. His father’s gaze shifted to Gil, lava hot and accusatory as if Gil were somehow to blame for Malcolm’s scars. Gil ignored him and helped Malcolm to begin redressing his wounds.

“Do you understand now what you put other families through?” Malcolm knew it was pointless to assume that his father would process the emotions like the rest of humanity. “Do you understand it enough to finally tell me who the girl in the box was and where to find her?”

The charming mask reestablished itself and his father smiled. “You dreamed that, Malcolm. You always were an imaginative child as I’m sure Gil can attest to. Can’t you, Detective Arroyo?” His smile held enough sugar to keep a coffee house a float. 

The wrinkles around Gil’s dark eyes deepened. “I can’t argue he’s imaginative but if he says there was a woman hidden in your basement, then I believe him.”

Malcolm hoped it didn’t show on his face how surprised he was. _Note to self, don’t play poker with Gil_. He knew Gil didn’t believe him, never had in twenty years, not until Lazar surfaced, but Malcolm would never guess it from Gil’s expression.

“I’m more perplexed as to how you got her downstairs without anyone in the house knowing,” Gil said.

His father’s eyes twinkled. “Simple. I didn’t.”

That was a lie, a very carefully concealed one but Malcolm knew it was a falsehood.

“Surely this isn’t why you came all this way or was it just to reassure me that _my_ boy is strong and a survivor?” He moved to the end of his tether and Mr. David approached, possibly to handcuff his hands down. His father backed up.

“That definitely wasn’t why I came, Dr. Whitly,” Malcolm said blandly as Gil taped down another dressing on his arm. “I need to know Paul Lazar’s real name and where are his killing grounds besides the junkyard.”

The cheerful expression faded into something more guarded, almost disappointed. “I would have thought you figured it out by now.”

“I was busy living inside a steamer trunk,” Malcolm snapped as Gil finished off the last of the dressings. He helped Malcolm slide on his shirt.

His father tracked that motion with such hate in his eyes it stilled Malcolm’s fingers. He left his shirt unbuttoned. “And I’ve been here for twenty years thanks to your Detective Arroyo. How do you imagine I know where he kills these days?” The vicious undercurrent of his tone hinted at the monster his father actually was and he obviously wanted to unchain the monster all over Gil.

“Because killers tend to stick to their favored places. You did.” He velcroed up his boot. “And he’s threatening to kill me, Mother and Ainsley. I can’t convince them to _leave_ and go somewhere safe. I begged them to go with me but Mother is stubborn.”

“You don’t have to tell me about your mother.” He shot a hostile, intensely jealous look at Gil. “Maybe you should warn Gil.”

Gil arched his eyebrows. “I have twenty years of dealing with Jess. I’m well aware of how stubborn she is.”

His father’s sardonic rictus sent a chill up Malcolm’s spine. He’d warned Gil not to engage but that as proving impossible. He needed to jump in. Malcolm struggled up to his feet, his shirt flapping open. He walked right up to the line, staring his father down. “Do you want Ainsley to die? Because we might not always be able to protect her.”

His father clenched his jaw, looking away. “I truly did think you’d have worked it out where we met by now.”

Malcolm blinked, staggering a bit as a sudden pain stabbed up his leg. Gil grabbed his shirt, tugging him back and nearly sliding it off Malcolm’s torso. He sat and started doing up his buttons. He considered that. “You met at a hospital.”

His father nodded. “Do you know why he kills at a distance?”

“He doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, quite literally.” Malcolm mumbled. “He sees a lot of things as dirty both physically and morally. He made a big deal of that to me yesterday.”

“Ah, so he’s still calling.”

“And you’re stilling playing games with me,” Malcolm replied. This had been such a wasted effort. Maybe he should have listened to his mother. He’d need another tactic to break through his father’s defenses.

“He has always been so fastidious. I blame his upbringing.”

“His mother was a prostitute and addict,” Gil said.

His father’s gaze slipped over to Gil and curled his lip but he nodded. “She didn’t last long.”

“Who raised him, a highly religious aunt? No, more likely a grandparent.”

“So, you puzzled that part out too. Good for you, my boy. Grandparents, both of them were very religious very hard on him. He didn’t share your gentle upbringing.”

Malcolm scowled. Leave it to his father to pat himself on the back. It was true he’d been raised with love and kindness, nurtured at every step until he found the girl. “The FBI made it sound like I was having sex with two women at once and he was spying on them. He overheard all the salacious talk. He called me dirty, decided that I needed his attention.” To his shock, his father paled. “He’s threatened my family and my friends who is he, sir? I have to know.” 

“Two women? What were you up to, my boy?” Martin waggled his bushy eyebrows.

“_Not_ what everyone is insinuating. They keep forgetting the part where Gil and Mother were also both staying over.”

“Including you,” Gil said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Because it’s germane to Lazar’s misunderstanding. Everyone was at my place for a potluck and making me some prepared meals so I don’t have to acquiesce to Mother’s idea of getting me a live-in nurse. The once a day dressing change nurse is plenty enough,” Malcolm said, hearing his fraying nerves singing in his hot tone. “The point is, thanks to the incident, Lazar has not only threatened our family, Dad.” He lingered on that. He used the word so infrequently with this man he hoped it made an impression. “He’s threatened three police detectives, the medical examiner and one sweet old lady simply because they were being kind to me. I’m especially afraid for the two ladies in question. What if Lazar decides I’m lying about Gil and Mother being there all night, in separate locations before _you_ jump to any conclusions of your own?” He shot his father a warning look when he saw Martin’s rage building in his eyes. “What if he comes for them and takes them by surprise? No one should have to be tortured to death because they were being kind to me.”

His father spread his hands. “I would have thought you were used to shouldering blame that wasn’t your own by now.”

Malcolm tried to jump up but Gil held him down. His father turned his back before Malcolm could say anything.

“You already have what you need, my boy. Puzzle it out. You’re more than smart enough but you’re right.” He whipped back around, danger in his eyes. “He will make what Mallory Lostetter did to you look like child’s play. Those grandparents of his instilled very strange ideas of morality and sexual conduct in him. He would see a fun little ménage a trois in a very different light than you or I. Me, if that’s how you choose to express your desires, I say enjoy yourself. He would see it worthy of punishment and correction. His grandparents made a very big deal of that. I suppose that’s why he kicked the jack out from under his grandfather’s car when he was not much older than you were when you betrayed me.” He sighed heavily.

In spite of himself, Malcolm said, “Really? So, his need to use crushing by car goes back decades? That’s fascinating.”

“Focus,” Gil whispered.

His father beamed, obvious seeing Malcolm’s interest as him winning out over whatever he thought Gil wanted. “It really is. But he never liked getting his hands dirty. That’s equally fascinating when you consider when I knew him, he took his pleasure with cadavers.”

Malcolm widened his eyes, his jaw loosening. He hadn’t profiled _that_. Edrisa and her domain rocketed to the top of his worry list. “He’s a necrophiliac? I hadn’t guessed that.”

“I’d imagine that’s because there wasn’t enough of his own victims left to have sex with,” his father replied, edging up to the line. Malcolm shuddered at the thought and caught the soft sound of disgust Gil made. “That’s some of the reason he was so taken with my work.”

Malcolm gagged softly and Gil rubbed the back of his neck, setting his father on edge. He caught his father’s eye before he could blow up at Gil. “If I can’t stop him, he will do that to Ainsley.”

His father flinched and Malcolm knew he had him. He let that sink in a moment before adding. “Or to Mother. For all I know, he’d do that to _me_. Is that what you want?”

Martin’s gaze slithered away before refocusing on Malcolm. “Watkins. You keep your sister safe.”

“Thank you.” That’s all he needed. Watkins was a common name but sharing a hospital with his father, having a squashed grandfather would narrow the list considerably. “I need to go now.”

His father deflated as Gil gestured to Mr. David who nodded, taking out his phone. Malcolm paid them no mind. “Do you have to leave so quickly? Stay and talk, son. I miss that. Send your guard dog to the car. He can start his detectives looking for Watkins while you and I chat.”

“I’ve already chatted about the only things I care to.” Malcolm stood. The room twisted like a Tilt-a-Whirl, and he nearly pitched over. 

His father jumped forward, yanked back by his tether. Gil’s arm went around Malcolm’s waist, steadying him. Malcolm couldn’t help himself. He leaned against Gil’s shoulder until the room stopped spinning.

“_My_ boy is right. He does need to go home or to lie down.” He nodded toward his own bed. “Orthostatic hypotension passes quickly normally but I’m guessing Malcolm is still a bit low on blood.”

“Again, whose fault is that?” Gil asked while Malcolm worried at how hard his father had hit ownership of him.

Martin narrowed his eyes. “Just remember, _Gil,_ it was my blood that spilled in Lostetter’s cabin, not yours.”

“Don’t,” Malcolm warned them both. “Take me home and again, thank you.” Let his father have that. If they could capture Lazar, no Watkins, thanks to this then he was grateful.

“Anytime, Malcolm. You should come calling more often.”

Malcolm sighed and took up his cane. He let Gil lead him to the door and Mr. David opened it. He paused, glancing up at Gil. “Give me a minute alone.”

Gil nodded and slipped out the door without argument. Leaning heavily on his cane, Malcolm turned back to his father. “Leave Gil alone, sir.”

His father chuckled and returned to his desk, dismissively. “What do you imagine I can do from here, Malcolm?”

“You arranged the chaos that went down when Ainsley came for your interview.”

“So they say. I was punished whether I had done it or not,” his father replied with a hint of bitterness. “And even if I had, that was internal.”

“And you have a computer.” He nodded to it. “I know your interactions are monitored but you’re clever. You slipped your drawings to one serial killer. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility you could contact Watkins somehow. I’m sure you’d love to send him after Gil.”

“That man is not your father.” 

Malcolm jumped at the viciousness of his response. He stiffened his spine, meeting his father’s furious gaze. He was not about to be cowed by Martin Whitly now. If he showed weakness, the shark that was his father would hone right in on it. “He has been a dad to me for years but Gil is more than that. He is the reason I’m still here and I’m not speaking metaphorically.”

The effect of those words was more profound than he expected. His father stood, stalking back over to his line. “What are you talking about? You haven’t….” He let it trail off because he no doubt saw in Malcolm’s eyes the stark ugly truth. Martin’s composure rattled like a rusted out car.

“When I’ve been lost in my own darkness, Gil’s been there holding on tight. Mother loves me but she can’t…” Malcolm swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat. His father tried to close the distance between them but couldn’t. “She and Ainsley aren’t enough to keep me alive. I feel horrible to even think that but it’s true. Ainsley doesn’t even know about the suicide attempts. Mother hovers over me too much because of it. It’s one of the reasons I was grateful to be in D.C., away from that. She means well but it’s not always what I need or want. Gil keeps me grounded. If you take him, you’ll take me too. That’s not a threat or overstatement. I _need_ Gil and I fear what will become of me when he’s gone.”

Silence enveloped them. For several long moments they said nothing, simply staring at each other. Finally, his father said, “If people hear you talk like this, you’ll end up in a place like this.”

“I’ve been on a seventy-two hours hold before, only in a place much nicer, the wealthy sort that has the name ‘retreat’ or ‘resort’ so no one knows what’s really going on,” he replied bitterly. He hated having put his Mother and Gil through so much with that episode of his. He knew he hadn’t been in his right mind but the guilt of it lingered regardless. “Hate Gil all you want but leave him the hell alone.”

“No need for cursing, son. I won’t so much as raise my voice to your precious policeman,” he replied, mocking Malcolm with every word. “You do realize he wants your mother, don’t you?”

Malcolm shrugged, taking the changed subject and the hate for what they were: a distraction from his father’s own pain at his disclosure. Malcolm might never know for sure if his father loved him but he knew Martin valued him none the less. “That would be their business, not mine but no, I don’t actually think he does. He’s kind to her because Gil is kind to _everyone_. He’s what I wish you had been but that’s not your nature. Devastating or not, I have to live with that. Goodbye Dr. Whitly.”

To his surprise, his father nodded without protest. “Keep your mother and sister safe.”

“We’ll do our best.”

Malcolm fumbled for the doorknob, emotions swelling like a tsunami. Mr. David opened it for him and Malcolm kept his eyes off his father. He shouldn’t be so overwhelmed that his father had helped, that maybe he did care just a little bit about Ainsley, or at least didn’t want Watkins to be the one to harm his children. Just outside the door Gil waited with an orderly who had a wheelchair. Sorrow and frustration fled in the face of his annoyance. “Gil!”

“Get in the chair before you either fall down or mess up that ankle worse by over doing it.” Gil stabbed a finger at the chair.

“Listen to your detective, son. He’s not wrong in this case,” his father called after him.

Malcolm let his shoulders slump. He sat in the chair, trying to keep his face down so his father wouldn’t see the pain, the standing tears in his eyes. The orderly flipped up the footrests and started wheeling him away. Mr. David locked the door behind them. 

“You okay, kid?” Gil asked as they made their way out.

“No, I don’t think I am.”

Gil reached over and patted his shoulder. “Would you like to stop somewhere to take your mind off things or just go home?”

“Home please.”

“I think Edrisa is already there with your mother.”

Malcolm allowed himself a smile. “I shudder to think.”

Gil returned that grin. “It might be good for your mother to have someone nearly as indomitable as she is to deal with.”

Malcolm laughed. “Oh, the images. There might not be anything left of my apartment.” He sobered up. “I didn’t want Edrisa to be at more risk by being there.”

“Dani will be there soon too. It will be okay.” Gil sighed. “Your father gave us what we needed. It won’t be long now.”

“I hope you’re right.” 

Time would tell he knew but he couldn’t let his fear show now. He could fall apart in Gil’s car or once he got home but for now he chose to believe Gil was right. The alternative was too frightening.

XXX

Malcolm paused outside the door for a few minutes letting the sweat on his face dry off. At least he had convinced his mother to stay in the lobby with a book. She did like to read but often didn’t have the time, or that’s what she said. He knew it was because when she had enough free time to read, the weasels in her own mind prey upon her so she drank or took more of her mood stabilizers and was too numb to read. He wished either Gil or Dani had been available to bring him here or that Mother would have been willing for him to come on his own. Thankfully she was willing to give him privacy for this at least for a little while. 

Having gathered himself up, Malcolm knocked on the door and an orderly left him in. Shadyside hospital was far nicer than Claremont but it was no less a locked-down psychiatric intensive care facility. The meeting room had the bland beige walls and cheap table of a police interrogation room. He should have felt at home but he’d rather be at the precinct than here. The orderly gestured to the table. Malcolm had already been apprised of the rules and conditions. He knew Mallory wasn’t going to be handcuffed but her handler was authorized to use sedatives to restrain her if necessary.

She glanced up at him, tracking his slow, cane-aided, loud-booted progress across to the table. Mallory looked washed out, more than just the lack of makeup and the oatmeal hued ‘patient uniform’ they had her in. Her eyes had lost all luster. If she hadn’t been watching him so intently, he wouldn’t be sure that she even recognized him. He sat down in front of her.

Mallory winced as he put the cane against the table. “You came.”

“I felt I had to.” Doubt boiled up in him. This could be a terrible mistake.

Her eyes swept over him. “You’re healing but something is haunting you, something bigger than me.”

Malcolm blinked. He hadn’t expected her to be quite so perceptive. “My father had a killing buddy. He’s after me now.”

Mallory tossed her hair back, perhaps savoring that tidbit. “You can’t catch a break, can you, Malcolm?” 

He made a face. “No. Maybe I don’t deserve one.”

She scoured his face with her gaze. “You mean that. Part of me agrees and part of me…why didn’t I kill you? Is it the part of me that feels sorry for you right now?”

Malcolm wanted to reach across the table and take her hand but restrained himself. It was off limits anyhow. “I think so. You are not a killer, Mallory. My father is. It’s something that is inside you to be that cold, to torture and kill. Maybe had you simply shot me in my apartment, you could have done it but that’s not even a sure thing. I might be dead but you might not be able to live with it.”

Turning her face away, Mallory sat quietly, digesting that. “You might be right and I’m not sure if I hate that insight or am grateful. Did this buddy help your father kill my mother?” She slowly swiveled her gaze back to him.

Malcolm shook his head. He couldn’t possibly tell her the truth he’d just learned, that Watkins was a necrophiliac. He would not put those images into her head. “I have no way of knowing. My father talked a lot about other killers but he never told me much about his own. I’ve read about them, of course but…he’s my father, Mallory. There’s only so much horror I could take in about the man.” Another lie. He’d digested every bit of it. “He never told me once about Watkins. I had to find him on my own, quite unexpectedly. It’s horrible, I know but I have no idea about what he did. All I know is no good will come of thinking too hard on it. I’ve spent a lot of my life letting the past rob me of the joys of the present. I suspect you have too.”

She made a bitter noise, glancing toward the lone, high window in the room. “And what is the alternative, Malcolm? Go out and live my best life?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Well I’m here for one and from here prison, unless that lawyer I’ve been talking to hasn’t been lying to me.” Another bitter laugh preceded her digging her broken nails into the tabletop. “She says you and your mother are pushing to have her argue that I’m insane and I’ll be spending time in a secure mental hospital like this one instead of jail. Much like your father I guess.”

“Probably in a nicer place than where my father is incarcerated, but yes, that is the plan.”

Mallory cocked her head, scrutinizing him. “Why in the hell would you do that? Aren’t you afraid I’d get out and finish you off?”

He decided she deserved honesty. “Maybe a little but I think you lost your taste for this.”

She slapped the table, making her keeper jump to his feet. She held a hand to him. “You’re right. When you broke, when you went catatonic, I was horrified. I was terrified of myself and I just…I wanted you back.” 

“And that’s why you’re here. Your humanity is damaged, Mallory but not gone. Maybe normal isn’t out of the question. Do I hate what you did to me and Mother, of course. I’m in a lot of pain still and the nightmares are worse but I’m not unforgiving.”

A twisted smile crossed her face. “You forgive me?”

“Not yet but I can see a future where I could.”

“Do you forgive him?”

He shook his head. “Some things can’t be forgiven. He took too much from far too many. I know you didn’t believe me but we didn’t know he was a killer and once I did learn what he was, I put a stop to him which was…”

“You were a child. I know you made that argument…there in the cabin.” She glanced off. “It wasn’t a truth I wanted to hear.”

“I know. It’s a shame. Mother liked you, you know. She has almost no friends thanks to that man. You aren’t alone in not believing she didn’t know but she didn’t and I’m not saying that as her son. I’m saying that as an investigator with access to the police interviews and the evidence.” It was his turn to struggle to look at her, haunted by the memory of his mother’s face in the interview tapes. “She was happy to have you as a new friend and now…she can barely look at me because she blames herself for all the pain I’m in.”

“I can’t be sorry for that. She should have known,” she snarled.

“She thought he was having an affair.”

“So protective. Do you think she deserves it?” She leaned forward on the table. “It goes both ways though. I saw it when I had you in the cabin. She was fierce and would do anything to protect you. I could admire that about your mother. Do you know how proud she is of you?”

“I know. Ainsley and I are her whole world.” Mostly because they were the only ones who hadn’t deserted her. If his mother was overbearing sometimes, it was mostly because she was so afraid of losing the two people left to her. He understood it logically but it could be hard to deal with it some days.

“That’s true.” She sighed heavily. “What now, Malcolm? Do you plan to keep coming here?”

“I will if you want. If you don’t, this will be the last you see of me unless there’s a trial.”

Mallory pushed back from the table. “I don’t know what I want. I’ll have the lawyer let you know. I just know I’m tired now.”

“I’ll go then.” Malcolm stood, his limbs leaden, wondering if this had been a major mistake. He hadn’t accomplished much. 

“Malcolm, in the end, I’m sorry for what I did to you. It should have been him, not you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He knew it wouldn’t have given her the release she wanted. “I accept your apology.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Maybe but maybe you need me to. And in the end, you did treat the wounds you inflicted. It could have gone much worse for me,” he said and his ankle seemed to throb at the thought. 

“Go home, Malcolm, and I hope that your dad’s buddy doesn’t catch you.” 

“Thank you. Goodbye Mallory.”

She didn’t answer. She turned her back and looked out the small, barred window. Malcolm didn’t wait. He limped back down to the lobby. His mother set aside the book as soon as she heard his boot thumping. She met him halfway across the room, nestling her hand against his cheek. “You are exhausted, son.”

“I am.” It wasn’t worth lying about this. “I want to go home, Mother.”

She slipped an arm around his waist. “Alphonso is outside with the car. Gil’s police escort is too.”

“I wish you and Ainsley would just go. Like I said, take me with you.”

“I could send you on your own, anywhere you want to go.”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s not the point and you know it.”

“You know who Lazar is now and it’s only a matter of time before you catch him.” She shrugged as he pushed open the door. 

“He knows we’re looking. He’s intelligent because Dad would never have suffered a fool as a student.”

“We can argue at home.”

He sighed. “All right. We will.” 

But not today, he decided, casting a glance back at the hospital. He was too tired out. He’d lost too much but there was hope. His mother wasn’t wrong. They knew John Watkins’s name. Gil and the team were on his trail. Malcolm still had resting and healing to do. As he helped his mother into the car and sliding in after her, he wanted nothing more than to go home with his friends and he hoped they found Watkins before he had the chance to harm Malcolm’s family because the team wasn’t his friends. They were as close as family to him. He hoped they understood that. If not, well he had a chance tonight playing The Walking Dead Clue to tell them how he felt. Sure, he’d probably chicken out but maybe they’d know anyhow. Malcolm certainly hoped so because after everything he’d been through, the fact that they were still there, meant the world. If nothing else, he’d make sure they knew that much. He allowed himself a soft smile as he headed home. Life was hard but he was still here and in the moment, he was relieved and hopeful things would work out.

_Fini_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your support as I posted this story chapter by chapter. It's so very appreciated and I'm glad to have had you along for the ride. Yes I realize that this is opened ended and I'll need to come along with a canon divergent way of dealing with John Watkins but I need to decide how to do that.

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s Note** \-- This continues what will obviously be canon divergent once _Pied-a-Terre_ airs but contains my speculation on Eve, who she really is and what she wants. I decided on a different crime than the one in the trailer simply because it fit the prompts better than one where they were joking back and forth.


End file.
